The Disability Rights Center (DRC) sent out a call for action yesterday after the Senate Judiciary Committee passed to the full Senate chamber SB258 (Now HB 2016).? If this topic is important to you, please reach out to your Senator and encourage him/her to vote NO.? See the Disability Rights Center message below.?
Martha
Today the Senate Judiciary Committee passed to the full Senate the horrible bill that attacks the ADA. Not only that, THEY MADE THE BILL WORSE. First, they adopted the amendment from the Chamber of Commerce. To add insult to injury, the Committee added a new provision that would require the plaintiff with a disability to pay the attorney?s fees of the business (even if the business is found to have violated the ADA). The original bill said a judge ?may? order attorney?s fees and costs incurred by the business in defending the litigation. The amendment changes it so now a judge ?shall? award attorney's fees and costs (again, even if the business was not accessible). It gets worse. The court can also award punitive damages to the business but NOT the person with a disability whose ADA rights were violated. Again, all of this happens even if the business was found to have violated the ADA.
The Senate Committee did a ?gut and go? and put the contents of that now doubly horrible bill into HB 2016. It is no longer SB 258. It is now HB 2016. They did that as a procedural maneuver to pass the bill in the Senate and send it straight to Conference Committee, thus bypassing a hearing on the House side.
The new bill does not just have a chilling effect on the ability of Kansans with disabilities to enforce their ADA rights. This bill ships ADA rights off to the deep freeze of Siberia!
This just got real. Now is the time to pull out all the stops. Don?t hold anything back. Share the Action Alert link (below). Please call and write your Kansas Senators and tell them to vote NO on HB 2016. Call your local media. Get them to report on how horrible this bill is and how it harms their readers/listeners/viewers. Get them to write stories. Get personal examples to the media of how this will harm people. Share this message with others. Get your supporters, friends, and anyone else to fight this!
To me, we should call this The Attack the ADA Bill ? because that is exactly what this bill does. To find out more about the specifics of this bad bill, feel free to read the attached testimony from DRC Kansas and TILRC.
Action Alert to Share with your email lists & social media is here.
List of members of the Senate.
Attached below are the opposing testimony provided in committee by Lane Williams of the Disability Rights Center and Ami Hyten director of the Topeka Independent Living Resource Center (TILRC)
Martha K. Gabehart | Executive Director
Kansas Commission on Disability Concerns (KCDC)
Kansas Governor Laura Kelly
900 SW Jackson, Suite 100 | Topeka, Kansas 66612
(785) 296-6525 (direct) | (785) 260-4027 (cell)
[email protected] | www.kcdcinfo.ks.gov
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