Since the groundbreaking recognition of disability rights with
the
Rehabilitation Act of 1973, disability rights law has expanded
dramatically with new laws and evolving concepts of what disability
means in American society. This symposium will cover a wide variety
of topics of continuing and emerging importance to the disability
community including access to education and health care, technology
and community organization. The day-long event features five panels
of academics, lawyers, activists, and practitioners. In addition, there
will be an art display of works by artists with disabilities and photographs
chronicling the disability movement curated by Harold Adler. In
conjunction with this display, we will have a luncheon featuring disabled
artist, Prof. Katherine Sherwood.
Friday, March 15, 2002
8:00 to 8:30 a.m.
Registration and Breakfast
*** All panels will be held in Boalt's Booth Auditorium ***
8:30 to 10:00 a.m.
Healthcare panel
* Debbie Kaplan, World Institute on Disability
* Dr. J Dougal Mackinnon, Alta Bates Hospital
* Dr. Barbara Ridgeley, Alta Bates Hospitall
10:00 to 11:30 a.m.
Community activism panel
* Moderator: Paul Longmore, SFSU Professor &
Activist
* Jan Garrett, Executive Director, Center for
Independent Living
* Jean Lin, Protection and Advocacy, Inc.
* Dan Sorenson, State Department of Mental Health
11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
Technology panel
* Moderator: Dierdre Mulligan, Samuelson Law &
Technology, Clinic, Acting Director
* Cynthia Waddel, Accessibility Center for Excellence
* Jackie Brand, Alliance for Technology Access,
Co-Founder
* Laura A. Heymann, Senior Counsel, America Online
Inc.
1:00 to 2:00 p.m.
Lunch:
* Art and Disability: Asst. Prof. Katherine Sherwood
2:00 to 3:30 p.m.
Litigation strategies panel
* Moderator: Professor Linda Kreiger
* Melissa Kasnitz, Disability Rights Advocates
* Linda Kilb, Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund
* Lainey Feingold, Attorney
* Claudia Center, Employment Law Center
3:30 to 5:00 p.m.
Education panel
* Moderator: Stephen Rosenbaum, Protection & Advocacy Inc.
* Janeen Steel, Western Law Center for Disability Rights, Director of Learning
Rights Project
* Rhoda Benedetti, Disability Rights Advocates
* Paul D. Grossman, U.S. Dept. of Education, Office of Civil Rights, Region
IX, Chief Civil Rights Attorney
* Lenore Silverman, General Counsel, SF Unified School District
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Opening Dinner
(Sold Out - Thurs) |
Arlene Mayerson (DREDF) |
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Healthcare Panel
(8:30 - 10:00am) |
Debbie Kaplan (World Institute on Disability) |
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Community Activism Panel |
Paul Longmore (SFSU) |
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Technology
Panel (11:30-1:00pm) |
Moderator: Deidre
Mulligan (Samuelson Clinic) Cynthia Waddel (ACE) Jackie Brand (ATA) Laura A. Heymann, Senior Counsel, AOL Inc. |
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Lunch (1-2pm)
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Art & Disability: Katherine Sherwood (Asst Prof) |
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Litigation Strategies Panel
(2:00-3:30) |
Moderator: Professor
Linda Krieger |
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Education |
Stephen Rosenbaum (Lecturer at Boalt) Janeen Steel (Learning Rights Project) Rhoda Benedetti (DRA) Paul Grossman (US DOE) Lenore Silverman, GC, SF Unified School district |
Arlene B. Mayerson has been the Directing Attorney of DREDF since 1981. One of the nation's leading experts in disability rights law, she has been a key advisor to both Congress and the disability community on the major disability rights legislation for the past two decades, including the Handicapped Children's Protection Act as well as other legislation ensuring the special education rights of students with disabilities, and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). At the request of members of Congress, Ms. Mayerson supplied expert testimony before several committees of Congress when they were debating the ADA. She filed comments on the ADA regulations for more than 500 disability rights organizations. Ms. Mayerson has devoted her career exclusively to disability rights practice, representing clients in a wide array of issues. She has provided representation, consultation to counsel, and coordination of amicus briefs on key disability rights cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. She was appointed by the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Education to the Civil Rights Reviewing Authority, responsible for reviewing civil rights decisions of the Department.
In addition to her position at DREDF, Ms. Mayerson is currently a lecturer in disability law at the University of California, Berkeley (Boalt Hall). She has published many articles on disability rights and is the author of a comprehensive three-volume treatise on the ADA: Americans with Disabilities Act Annotated-Legislative History, Regulations & Commentary (Clark Boardman Callaghan, 1994), which sets forth the legislative history and regulations for each provision of the ADA.
Paul K. Longmore, Professor of History and Director of the Institute on Disability at San Francisco State University, specializes in Early American history and the history of people with disabilities. He earned his Ph.D. at the Claremont Graduate School and his B.A. and M.A. at Occidental College.
Longmore's book The Invention of George Washington (University of California Press, 1988; paper University Press of Virginia, 1998) is a study of Washington as a political actor and conscious shaper of his public image. Longmore has also written articles in scholarly journals and newspapers on themes related to Early American history and to the history of people with disabilities and their contemporary civil rights struggle. With Lauri Umansky, he co-edited The New Disability History: American Perspectives (New York University Press, 2001), an anthology of essays, and is co-editing a book series, The History of Disability for NYU Press. He is researching several other books: "George Washington and the Invention of the American Nation"; "Nationalism and the American Revolution"; "Presenting Tiny Tim: Telethons, American Culture, and the Making of Disability Identities"; and "Screening Stereotypes: Representing People with Disabilities in Motion Pictures and Television, A Cultural-Historical Analysis."
Longmore has obtained grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities to conduct a Summer Institute on Disability Studies, the Mount Vernon Ladies Association for research on George Washington, the National Institute of Disability and Rehabilitation Research to examine the impact of disability studies curricula, and the U.S. Department of Education to direct a mentoring project to facilitate the transition of students with disabilities from college to careers. He has also received an Andrew W. Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellowship in the Humanities, a Huntington Library Research Fellowship, and an H. B Earhart Foundation Research Fellowship.
Mr. Sorensen has been active in advocacy groups for people with
developmental and other substantial disabilities for over 30 years. He is the
father of a son with multiple developmental disabilities.
He served as executive director of two different area boards on developmental disabilities over an eight year period serving 14 counties. He was active in the early efforts to secure the rights of people with disabilities and a member of the 504 Committee operating out of the Center for Independent Living in Berkeley. He was the founder of The Disabled in State Service, which worked to end employment discrimination against people with disabilities. He was the first person to work full time in state government to ensure the civil rights of people with disabilities.
Mr. Sorensen founded and chaired the California Coalition on Crime Against
People with Disabilities (formally known as the California Victims of Crime
Committee)and has taken a leadership role on the problem of violent crime against
people with substantial disabilities over the last ten years. He helped develop
and is the Program Coordinator of the California Health and Human Services Agency's
Crime Victims with Disabilities Initiative, the first permanent state government
program in the nation comprehensively addressing crime and violence against
people with disabilities.
Jean Lin is a Multicultural Affairs Advocate for Protection and Advocacy, Inc. (PAI), a non-profit organization that provides free legal services to people with disabilities in the state. As an outreach coordinator, Jean works with the underserved multi-ethnic communities in disability right issues, particularly equal access to services for minorities with disabilities. Jean believes she's the product of the Independent Living movement and has been an active member with the Berkeley Independent Living Center for over ten years.
As a Chinese-American with a disability (cerebral palsy), Jean has had first-hand experience in confronting the many barriers that people with disabilities often face in maneuvering throughout the disability services system. Through personal experience, she believes that it is of utmost importance that the service providers maintain consistency in their service delivery in multi-cultural communities. Jean works to foster trust in traditionally mistrustful, fall-into-the-crack, undeserved communities and raise issues about disability rights to people's comfort level, so as to respect the culture but promote diverse understanding, which will make room for new knowledge about disability right acceptance in all cultures.
Jacquelyn Brand was the founder and first Executive Director of the Alliance for Technology Access (ATA), a national organization with local community access centers across the country dedicated to providing access to communication and information technologies for children and adults with disabilities. She served as Director of this organization from 1987 - 1996, and currently sits as a member of the Board of Directors. She also founded and served as the first Executive Director of the Center for Accessible Technology in Berkeley, California, one of the earliest community-based technology programs established to provide access to current and emerging technologies.
Ms. Brand coordinates the work of the Universal Service Alliance (USA), a project of ATA, which is focused on achieving access to emerging technologies for all underserved communities. USA played a pivotal role in negotiating the Community Partnership Agreement with Southwest Bell Communications and Pacific Bell, creating a technology fund to reach underserved communities. The Community Technology Foundation of California (CTFC), created as a result of these negotiations, provides grants of 5 million dollars annually to the community. Ms. Brand serves as the Vice President of the Board of Directors for this body.
Ms. Brand serves on many boards and task forces focused on access for underserved communities, and especially individuals with disabilities, including the AOL-Time Warner Accessibility Advisory Committee, the Cingular Wireless Access Task Force, and the National Task Force on Technology and Disability. She is the President of the Independent Living Network (ILN), a non-profit organization dedicated to providing options for independent living to individuals with significant disabilities. ILN looks at the enormous potential of assistive and general technologies for supporting people with disabilities in achieving full and productive lives.
Ms. Brand has been honored for her work frequently, receiving the Strache Leadership
Award at California State University, Northridge (CSUN), the Martin Luther King
Jr. Humanitarian Award in her community, and was inducted into the Exceptional
Parent Family Hall of Fame. In 1992, Ms. Brand was the recipient of the Henry
B. Betts Award, established to honor a single individual each year for significant
work in improving the quality of life for people with disabilities. She is the
parent of two grown daughters, one of whom has significant disabilities.
Katherine Sherwood
Katherine Sherwood, Associate Professor of Art Practice at the University of
California, Berkeley, teaches painting and drawing. As part of Cal's Disability
Studies minor, she will teach "Art, Medicine, and Disabilities," a
course that will look at disability and medicine in art history, visual representations
of culturally different healing modalities, and the work of modern and contemporary
disabled visual artists. A painter, her works have been included in local, national,
and international exhibitions at Chiang Mai University in Thailand, Universidad
de Concepción in Chile, and the 2000 Whitney Biennial in NewYork. She
is the 1999 winner of the Adeline Kent Award which included a solo exhibit at
the San Francisco Art Institute. Recent shows have been at Gallery Paule Anglim
in San Francisco and at Michael Kohn Gallery in Los Angeles.
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This panel will focus on the effect of recent court rulings on disability litigation. Disability rights litigators will address the Supreme Court's increasing tendency towards conservative federalist rulings and discuss strategies litigators can employ to achieve success despite this alarming trend. |
Melissa Kasnitz, a graduate of Boalt Hall and Yale University, is a staff attorney at Disability Rights Advocates. In five years at DRA, she has worked to ensure access to a broad range of public entities and places of public accommodation. Some of the most significant cases she has worked on include:
* Litigation against the flagship Macy's store in San Francisco's Union Square, to ensure access for people with mobility disabilities. This landmark case established after trial that retailers must provide access to merchandise to the extent readily achievable, and led to numerous other lawsuits around the nation to enforce the ADA against retail operators. In California, a settlement ensuring removal of architectural barriers, enhanced customer service, and a claims fund of $3,000,000 for damages has just been granted final approval by the court.
* Litigation against the City of Sacramento to ensure that it removes access barriers along the public rights of way, including installation of curb ramps and removal of barriers along the length of the sidewalk. The City has agreed to install 1500 curb ramps per year until all intersections are accessible; however, it is opposing any obligation to remove other sidewalk barriers. This issue will be heard by the 9th Circuit on March 12.
* Litigation against the California Department of Education and Board of Education, to ensure that the state's new High School Exit Exam does not discriminate against public school children with disabilities. The Court recently issued a preliminary injunction against the state to ensure that children with disabilities who are taking the exam on March 5-7 receive necessary safeguards.
* Litigation against BART to ensure that elevators are maintained so that people who use wheelchairs can access public transportation. This case resulted in a published preliminary injunction order, and an eventual settlement guaranteeing access upgrades throughout the transit system.
Since 1996, Lainey Feingold has had her own law practice in Berkeley, California devoted exclusively to representing persons with disabilities under federal and state law, primarily in matters seeking class-wide relief. Prior to opening her practice she was Litigation Director of the Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund (DREDF), a national public interest law and policy organization dedicated to the civil rights of persons with disabilities. She is a 1981 graduate of Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, and practiced union_side labor law and plaintiffs' employment law prior to her involvement in disability rights.
Most recently, Ms Feingold has represented the blindness community nationally in negotiating the first settlement agreements in the country that require financial institutions to install "talking ATMs" and ensure website accessibility and effective communication of financial information. She has resolved numerous cases on behalf of persons with disabilities against public accommodations, including national class actions against Shell and Chevron resulting in ADA implementation programs at over 5,000 service stations across the country. Ms. Feingold has taught disability rights classes at Bay Area law schools for many years and has spoken extensively on disability rights issues.
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Persons with disabilities seek education that is equal and accessible, from preschool through higher education. This presents challenges to older education systems and questions from all sides on the best way to integrate persons of diverse backgrounds and abilities. The panel on education and disability will cover these issues and the law backing up education reforms. Four experienced attorneys are on the panel. Rhoda Benedetti is a staff attorney with Disability Rights Advocates, Inc. Her work focuses largely on special education. Paul D. Grossman is the Chief Civil Rights Attorney at the U.S. Department of Education in San Francisco. His work focuses on higher education issues. Janeen Steel is an attorney with the Western Law Center for Disability Rights in Los Angeles. She is the founding director of the Learning Rights Project, a program that assists students with learning difficulties, learning disabilities, Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) to receive an appropriate education alongside their peers. Lenore Silverman, a former educator, is a Marin County attorney who represents school districts. |
Rhoda Benedetti is a staff attorney with Disability Rights Advocates (DRA)
in Oakland. The mother of a child with special needs, Ms. Benedetti learned
firsthand about rejection at the school house door. Determined to fight for
equal access to public schools for children with disabilities, Ms. Benedetti
attended law school at night while caring for her child during the day. A 1996
graduate of John F. Kennedy University School of Law, Ms. Benedetti came to
DRA with an Equal Justice Fellowship from the National Associaton of Public
Interest Law. As her fellowship project, Ms. Benedetti brought and won a desegregation
class action on behalf of 5,000 children with disabilities in Contra Costa County.
The
landmark settlement ensures both architectural and programmatic access at 55
schools and the commitment of $30 million over ten years to fund the work. Ms.
Benedetti now specializes in high impact education cases to ensure equal access
for people with disabilities, such as Gustafson v. UC Berkeley, the class action
brought by Boalt Hall students seeking architectural access at UC.
STEPHEN ROSENBAUM has a JD from University of California at Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall) and has a master's in public policy as well from UC-Berkeley. Mr. Rosenbaum has practiced with various legal services and public interest law firms. In 1998, he associated with Protection & Advocacy's Oakland office where he specializes in legal matters related to elementary and secondary school students with disabilities and support services for adults with developmental disabilities in institutional and community-based facilities. He is also an adjunct faculty member at Boalt Hall, where he teaches a social justice law and practice seminar.
Janeen Steel, Esq., is the Founding Director of the Learning Rights Project at the Western Law Center for Disabilities Rights in Los Angeles, California. She received her J.D. from UCLA School of Law and focuses her career exclusively on special education rights. Her work in this field is becoming increasingly well-known, particularly due to the Learning Rights Manual, a user-friendly handbook for people with learning disabilities and their parents. It teaches a step-by-step approach to advocating for rights under special education law.
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Students / Community Members/ Berkeley Faculty
and Staff
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FREE (Lunch $5)
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Professionals (Lawyers or others employed in
a disability related field)
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$30 (includes lunch)
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MCLE credit
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an extra charge of $20 per
panel (1 credit/panel) |
ONLINE REGISTRATION
Mail In Registration
Print form and mail with check
STUDENT/COMUNITY MEMBER REGISTRATION FORM
Arlene B. Mayerson has been the Directing Attorney of DREDF since 1981. One of the nation's leading experts in disability rights law, she has been a key advisor to both Congress and the disability community on the major disability rights legislation for the past two decades, including the Handicapped Children's Protection Act as well as other legislation ensuring the special education rights of students with disabilities, and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). At the request of members of Congress, Ms. Mayerson supplied expert testimony before several committees of Congress when they were debating the ADA. She filed comments on the ADA regulations for more than 500 disability rights organizations. Ms. Mayerson has devoted her career exclusively to disability rights practice, representing clients in a wide array of issues. She has provided representation, consultation to counsel, and coordination of amicus briefs on key disability rights cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. She was appointed by the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Education to the Civil Rights Reviewing Authority, responsible for reviewing civil rights decisions of the Department.
In addition to her position at DREDF, Ms. Mayerson is currently a lecturer in disability law at the University of California, Berkeley (Boalt Hall). She has published many articles on disability rights and is the author of a comprehensive three-volume treatise on the ADA: Americans with Disabilities Act Annotated-Legislative History, Regulations & Commentary (Clark Boardman Callaghan, 1994), which sets forth the legislative history and regulations for each provision of the ADA.
Please contact us if you have questions or need more information or want to register
Boalt Disability Law Society
282 Simon Hall
UC Berkeley School of Law- Boalt Hall
Berkeley, CA 94720
(510) 643-2697
BDLS@law.berkeley.eduor Christine Solnick
symposium@solnick.org