Bush Signs Disabled Anti-Bias Act : Civil Rights: Thousands attend outdoor ceremony. Measure will prohibit discrimination against nation’s 43 million handicapped people.

As several thousand advocates for the disabled looked on, President Bush today signed an act banning discrimination against the nation’s 43 million handicapped people.

“Every man, woman and child with a disability can now pass through a once-closed door to a bright new era of equality, independence and freedom,” Bush said as he signed the measure in a ceremony on the South Lawn.

The President likened the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 to the dismantling of the Berlin Wall as a symbol of freedom for a once-oppressed people. It “takes a sledgehammer to another wall,” he said.

The bill prohibits discrimination against the disabled in employment, public accommodations, transportation and telecommunications, and defines as disabled anyone who has a mental or physical impairment limiting “some major life function.”

The disabilities bill, like other major civil rights legislation, includes a variety of sanctions for violators, including those who discriminate in hiring. It allows victims of employment discrimination to seek back pay, reinstatement and attorneys’ fees. However, the law exempts businesses with fewer than 15 employees from the hiring provisions.

The measure includes new protection for AIDS-infected workers.

“This day belongs to you,” Bush told the audience gathered outside the White House. It was one of the largest bill-signing ceremonies ever held at the White House.

About 2,000 people, representing groups that lobbied for the bill, sat in wheelchairs or on folding chairs at the ceremony in bright sunshine with temperatures in the mid-80s.

White House officials had considered moving today’s ceremony inside and reducing its size because of the anticipated heat.

But protests from disability groups, including a threat by some to hold a separate “people’s signing” ceremony outside the White House gates, persuaded officials to go ahead with the outside ceremony.

“We considered moving it inside because of the heat concerns. There could be up to two hours of sitting in the hot sun. But the disabled community said heat was no problem,” White House spokeswoman Alixe Glen said.

Some activists had suggested that the White House notion that disabled people are too frail to sit out in the summer sun showed the very kind of bias the legislation was designed to end.