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The Social Security Administration recently ordered all Administrative Law Judges (ALJ) to adhere to Social Security policy and ignore federal law, says Jim Allsup, founder of Allsup Inc., a leading private provider of Social Security representational services.
Allsup says he obtained a copy of an internal SSA memo that states "An ALJ is bound to follow Agency policy even if, in the ALJ's opinion, the policy is contrary to law."
Social Security denies 69 percent of all initial claims for disability benefits. Administrative law judges reverse about 62 percent of rejections that are appealed.
Allsup said the memo represented a sweeping change that could result in thousands of legitimate disability claims being denied.
An SSA spokesman pooh-poohed that, saying legitimate claims would not be affected. The spokesman said that the memo simply said that judges must apply the laws that exist and not make new laws.
Congressman George Genkas, R-Pennsylvania, planned to introduce legislation to ensure the independence of administrative law judges.
Kuschall of America, manufacturer of a line of pediatric and high-performance adult wheelchairs and other rehabilitation products, has been acquired by Everest & Jennings. E&J itself was acquired only last year by Graham-Field Health Products, Inc.
Kuschall president Michael Dempsey will be a consultant to Graham-Field for three years.
The documentary, "Breathing Lessons," which features the life and work of Mark O'Brien received an Oscar at the Academy Awards in March. The short film showcases the stunning poetry and disability consciousness of O'Brien, an iron lung user who lives in the San Francisco Bay area. It was gratifying to see a real crip on a night devoted to non-disabled actors portraying people with disabilities -- such as Billy Bob Thornton ("Sling Blade"), Woody Harrelson ("The People vs Larry Flynt"), and Geoffrey Rush ("Shine").
In winning the Oscar for best actor, Rush follows other crip-role winners of the 1990s -- Al Pacino for "Scent of a Woman," and Daniel Day Lewis for "My Left Foot."
Sunrise Medical, Inc. merged its five U.S. homecare divisions into a new operating unit. Quickie Designs, Jay Medical, DeVilbiss Health Care, Guardian Products and SunMed Service are combined under Tom O'Donnell and based in Boulder, Colorado. Also, Sunrise is consolidating its mobility products division (Quickie, Jay and Kid Kart) into one product division with Ben Anderson-Ray as president.
More than a dozen people came to testify at a legislative budget hearing one night not long ago in Hartford, Connecticut, but there was one problem: The people were deaf and no interpreter was in sight.
One of the items on the agenda was how the state Commission on the Deaf and Hearing Impaired provides and pays for interpreters. But the appropriations committee had neglected to provide an interpreter.
The hearing was delayed about 30 minutes as legislators searched for a solution. Three interpreters in the audience volunteered their services, provided the state would reimburse them.
Gov. John G. Rowland's budget proposal drew sharp criticism because the plan would relieve the state commission of its duty to provide licensed interpreters to state agencies, schools, courts or human-service agencies.
Who says you can't fight city hall? The city of Destin, Florida has knuckled under, and agreed in a settlement with the Justice Department to make the newly built city hall fully accessible.
That means: Fixing the parking lot to provide the correct number of van accessible spots; installing a ramp to provide access to more areas of city hall; making all public and employee restrooms accessible; making counters accessible; and modifying council chambers to provide access to people who use wheelchairs.
Good job.
Police investigating a series of office burglaries in Syracuse, New York, spotted wheel tracks in the carpeting, and then noticed security camera tapes showing a man entering the buildings in a wheelchair.
Authorities have charged Champ Hallett, the "Michael Jordan" of the Syracuse Flyers wheelchair basketball team.
After losing his right leg five years ago when he fell six stories trying to rob a crack house, Hallett, 32, found religion and became a rehabilitation success story for the Syracuse Rescue Mission.
The U.S. Paralympics selected Hallett to be an alternate to the 1996 Wheelchair Basketball team, said James H. Babel, president of the Flyers.
"He was the Michael Jordan of the Syracuse Flyers, maybe even with a little Magic Johnson thrown in," said Babel. "He was that good."
Babel said Hallett hadn't played with the team in months. And on March 4 Hallett was arrested and charged with burglary, petty larceny and criminal possession of stolen property.
Police said that when he was arrested he had a duffel bag containing stolen property, including a laptop computer.
The head of the Biloxi Housing Authority violated federal employment laws by declining to interview a legally blind applicant, a U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission official maintains.
Benjamin Bradley, director of the EEOC Jackson-area office in Mississippi, said the decision by Housing Authority Executive Director Bob Carroll violated the ADA.
Carroll said that Cowling's disability made him unqualified for the job, so there was no point in interviewing him.
"He would have been a liability," said Carroll, who became executive director in August. "We would have had to hire an assistant for him, and we don't have the money for that."
Carroll said he was seeking an employee with good vision who could handle extensive reading and site inspection duties.
But Cowling, who has undergone vision therapy, said he could have done the work with minimal assistance.
Denise Anderson, 35, of Raytown, a Kansas City suburb, is suing General Motors, claiming the company violated the ADA. She had worked at the GM plant in Fairfax, Kansas, just outside downtown Kansas City, Kansas.
GM spokeswoman Janine Fruehan said the company had no comment because the matter was in litigation.
Anderson alleges GM knew she had a learning disability and "an inability to adapt to a changing environment" when it hired her as an assembly-line worker in 1982.
The lawsuit says Anderson was given a succession of duties at the plant until 1988, when she was forced to take disability leave because of an episode "arising from work-related stress."
Doctors' reports said Anderson was able to return to work with certain accommodations, but GM refused to reinstate her, the lawsuit says.
Anderson's case was bolstered by a finding of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that GM violated the 1990 law by not reinstating her after a disability-related leave and by not crediting her pension account with the lost seniority.
The Republican leader in the Georgia House says lawmakers were misled about the need for a $500,000 state appropriation for organizers of the Atlanta Paralympic games, and he wants the funding stopped.
Although the budget bill that includes the appropriation already has been signed by Gov. Zell Miller, Rep. Bob Irvin, R-Atlanta, introduced new legislation to eliminate it.
The gesture was largely symbolic because it was late in the legislative session and any bill would require extraordinary support and effort to make it through the legislative maze.
The move came one day after Paralympic organizers conceded they never were in danger of defaulting on a debt of over $1 million owed to the Board of Regents for use of the Olympic Village at Georgia Tech for Paralympic athletes.
Legislative budget writers had been told earlier in the session the organization was strapped for cash and might be unable to pay its debt.
In their initial version of the midyear state budget, House leaders funded a $900,000 bailout for the Paralympics. But when the budget reached the Senate, the money was cut and a two-week stalemate followed.
A compromise approved in both houses and signed by Gov. Zell Miller trims the appropriation to $500,000 and earmarks the money for a Paralympics legacy program designed to provide continuing sports opportunities for disabled young people.
Amid a surge in citizenship applications because of sweeping changes to immigration and welfare laws, the federal government unveiled new rules for disabled immigrants seeking naturalization.
Exemptions from the English proficiency and civics portions of the citizenship test now can be obtained by those who can prove a significant mental, physical or developmental disability.
Medical doctors and clinical psychologists now can certify their patients' disabilities.
The INS will offer sign-language interpreters, Braille tests, on-site interviews and wheelchair-accessible testing sites where reasonable steps can be taken to provide testing for disabled applicants.
City officials in Yakima, Washington chastised Diamond Cab Co. for charging a man an additional $10 for transporting his wheelchair.
Norman Barber complained to the City Council that Diamond Cab imposed wheelchair stowage fees. Barber, who has no legs, questioned the fairness of the charge.
City officials ordered the company, which operates under a city license, to stop charging stowage fees and to refund Barber's $10.
Diamond Cab, however, has argued that the ADA allows it to charge a stowage fee for wheelchairs because it charges non-disabled riders the same fee for luggage, company President Pamela Scott said in a letter to the city.
Mayor pro tem John Puccinelli said he believed Barber's wheelchair could not be categorized as luggage anyway. "I do believe the wheelchair is an extension of the person," Puccinelli said.
Kathy derived no joy from her pregnancy, nor from her son's birth, doctors say. Neither did she live long enough to mark his first birthday in Rochester, New York.
The 30-year-old woman, who was raped while in a coma-like state and later gave birth, died at a health care center in upstate New York. A National Honor Society student, described by friends as attractive and fun-loving but also straight-laced and thoughtful, Kathy enrolled at Cornell University in 1984, aiming for a possible career in psychology or medicine.
But in 1985 a car wreck plunged her into a chronic vegetative state. A decade later, she was raped by an aide at a nursing home not far from where she grew up in suburban Rochester.
The infant was born with a congenital heart defect and underwent his second surgery on the same day a jury convicted John Horace of raping the baby's mother.
Kathy's parents decided to raise the baby.
Washington's new sports arena lost another round in court against a veteran's group seeking better access for wheelchair patrons, but officials don't believe the ruling will delay the facility's opening this fall.
U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan ordered the owners and operators of the MCI Center to resubmit plans for seating in the arena's Lower Bowl -- the lowest portion of the multi-tiered arena -- because he said that level still fails to provide patrons with disabilities enough seats with unobstructed views.
The $170 million, 20,000-seat arena, under construction in downtown Washington, will house two of the city's professional sports teams, the basketball Bullets and the hockey Capitals.
In the upper level, operators have agreed to keep empty the two rows in front of the designated wheelchair seating. On the club level, more seats with unobstructed views will be added.
Four retarded men found living in squalor on a farm just outside Spokane, Washington, were held against their will and used as slaves.
The four performed "slave labor for which they were never paid," said a report. They were "on the property against their will and not allowed to leave," the report said.
The men, in their 30s, 40s and 50s, had lived in a converted outbuilding for at least eight years. The four are in protective custody in state facilities until another home can be found for them.
The Spokane County Sheriff's Department has launched a criminal investigation of Budd and Laura Otto, the elderly farm owners, and their son, Wayne McKearnan.
Detectives say the Ottos may have cashed the men's Social Security checks and kept the money.
Investigators for DSHS said the 20-foot by 20-foot structure the men lived in had openings between the ceilings and walls, there were feces smeared on one wall and there were exposed electrical wires.
The only heat source was a portable space heater.
The head of the Florida Division of Blind Services has been forced to resign amidst criticism he was insensitive to blind people.
Whit Springfield met with his boss, Doug Jamerson, secretary of the Florida Department of Labor and Employment Security, and resigned, department spokeswoman Renee Watters said.
When Springfield was promoted to director in 1993, he was the first sighted person in more than 20 years in that job. Many of his employees complained in recent months that he was insensitive to the blind and only promoted people who were not blind in his administrative office.
Three current and former Blind Services snack bar vendors complained to Linda Shelley, chief of staff to Gov. Lawton Chiles, after Springfield made several comments about his critics in a Christmas Day newspaper article.
A kindergarten teacher is suing St. Denis School of suburban Havertown and the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, claiming they demoted her to part-time work because she has a son with disabilities.
Susan McGrenaghan, 37, charges that the demotion violates the Americans with Disabilities Act þ which prohibits discrimination against employees who are related to disabled persons.
"This type of outrageous conduct is an affront to all working mothers of children with disabilities and must not be tolerated," said attorney Lisa Rau of the Disabilities Law Project.
According to the suit, when McGrenaghan sought to return to her full-time position after maternity leave she was advised by the St. Denis principal "that because of her `situation' she would no longer be a full-time teacher...as long as little Gerard is alive."
The decrepit state traffic court in Providence, Rhode Island, largely inaccessible to people with disabilities for 15 years, has been ordered to comply with laws mandating equal access for people with disabilities.
The State Properties Commission issued the order for the Administrative Adjudication Court at a meeting attended by many people in wheelchairs.
Bob Cooper, executive director of the Governor's Commission on the Handicapped, told the commission the court has been violating accessibility laws since it moved into 345 Harris Avenue in the early 1980s.
Cooper, who uses a wheelchair, said the state Department of Administration has known about the problems for at least eight years and done little about it, despite his repeated requests.
"What we're talking about is, someone who cannot get out of their wheelchair cannot go to the bathroom," Cooper said. "It's not a little issue. It's a major issue."
An Alamogordo, New Mexico man who had sought a job at Wal-Mart has been awarded $157,500 by a jury that concluded the company didn't hire him because of a physical disability.
The jury found that Wal-Mart had made an improper medical inquiry about John Otero and "acted with reckless indifference to (Otero's) federally protected rights."
Otero, who had lost part of one arm in a car crash, applied for work at Wal-Mart in 1992 and was asked: "What current or past medical problems might limit your ability to do a job?"
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has published guidelines for the "unlawful inquiry" portion of the ADA.
"Specifically, the standard is that a question that's likely to elicit information about a disability is unlawful," said Christopher Lage, the EEOC attorney who tried the case.
-- In cooperation with the President's Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities, the ELA Foundation awarded Kirstin E. Wolf of Branford, Connecticut, the first ELA Foundation Fellowship. The $2,000 grant provides financial assistance to an individual with a disability who is pursuing graduate or professional study in disability public policy or public information.
-- The American Diabetes Association awarded Arlene Mayerson of the Disability Rights, Education and Defense Fund with its Public Policy Award for her work in protecting children with diabetes in day-care settings. Mayerson was instrumental in a settlement with KinderCare, Inc. under which the company now accepts children with diabetes and monitors their blood sugar levels.
-- United Parcel Service announced startup of a dedicated toll-free customer service for hearing-impaired customers. TDD access is available from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. (EST) Monday to Friday at (800) 833-0056.
-- RESNA, the Rehabilitation Engineering and Assistive Technology Society of North America, reported results for the 1996 charter year for credentialing Assistive Technology Practitioners and Assistive Technology Suppliers. Of the 172 candidates for ATS certification, 129 passed; of 163 candidates for ATP certification, 138 passed.
Associated Press reports were used compiling this column.