The Nation : The Disableds’ Worst Enemy--Their Protector

Rachael V. Santos cannot enter Atlantic Boulevard Post Office. Bibliophile Warren Mooley cannot get into the public library. Nor can Attorney Michael Dooner get into court. Why? Four years after Con gress unanimously passed the Americans with Disabilities Act, the law’s most flagrant violator is government itself. Indeed, its enforcement of the law with respect to itself betrays a cynical arrogance and hypocrisy.

The problem is that the enforcement apparatus is intentionally set up so that nobody watches the watchers. Examples:

* City building inspectors who recently cited a San Fernando Valley strip club’s shower prop as a disabilities violation (because it was inaccessible to potential handicapped strippers), simultaneously ignored thousands of violations in the city’s own buildings.

* Although the City Council found money to restore City Hall’s faded murals, the disabled cannot see them because the building itself remains inaccessible. This is equally true for the branch city halls in Van Nuys and West Los Angeles.

* More than two years ago, Los Angeles City Atty. James K. Hahn warned the council that the city could face federal charges unless it significantly improved access to its buildings. Since that time, nothing has been done, and the Justice Department has not uttered a peep.

* While former county Chief Administrative Officer Richard B. Dixon spent $6.1 million on remodeling his imperial offices in the Kenneth J. Hahn Hall of Administration--ironically named in honor of the wheelchair-bound former supervisor--the building had no toilets for the handicapped. Today, county headquarters has two.

* Able-bodied LAPD officers regularly park their cruisers in the blue zones reserved for the handicapped around Civic Center so they will not have to walk an extra block to court.

* None of the county’s 43 court facilities meets the law’s requirements, which, incidentally, did not stop judges from recently spending almost $9 million on every security toy imaginable.

Three years ago, judges ordered removal of the only two accessible handicapped parking spaces under the downtown Criminal Courts Building, because they wanted more convenient parking for--themselves. The official rationale for reclaiming the spaces: “judicial security.”

* In four years, California Atty. Gen. Daniel E. Lungren has not filed a single lawsuit to enforce the Americans with Disabilities Act, or its state counterpart, the Unruh Civil Rights Act, which makes an ADA violation also a violation of state law. Lungren’s publicly announced plan leaves enforcement to local building inspectors, which is like leaving the family’s nut supply with Chip and Dale.

The laws that apply to you and me also apply to the people who run the city, county and state. But while Mayor Richard Riordan’s Pantry restaurant is handicapped-accessible, his office is not.

Similarly, Supervisors Yvonne Brathwaite Burke and Gloria Molina, elected as reformers, have ignored their disabled constituents in county facilities. The Board of Supervisors is already two years tardy in completing a federally mandated “access transition plan” for the Justice Department, and no one seems to know, or care, when the plan will be completed.

The county has no Americans with Disabilities Act compliance officers--in violation of federal law--and it continues to discriminate in hiring. It recently refused to hire a talented, though mildly retarded gardener because the man did not know the Latin names of plants.

The county makes handicapped doctors crutch five blocks from the parking lot to the Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center. And any disabled young lawyer who wants a career with Dist. Atty. Gilbert L. Garcetti or Public Defender Michael P. Judge will need a strong bladder, as well as ability and perseverance: Neither office has lavatories for the disabled.

Nobody inspects government buildings to ensure compliance. The county’s Handicapped Access Appeals Board no longer meets at the Public Works Building in Alhambra because the building that billets the building inspectors is itself inaccessible.

Meanwhile, the nation’s largest criminal courthouse, the Criminal Courts Building, has no handicapped toilets, an inaccessible cafeteria and an entrance that lacks only a moat to make the building totally disabled-proof. One could complain to Presiding Judge Robert M. Mallano, but his courtroom in the Civil Courthouse is similarly inaccessible. So is every jury box in the county.

Indeed, with respect to the disabled, the judiciary fluctuates between benign neglect and open hostility. On the ground of “dignity,” a former presiding judge of the juvenile court opposed lowering the judges’ benches six inches during construction of the new Children’s Court to make them accessible. Instead, he recommended the expenditure of $250,000 for motorized lifts. As one courthouse wag commented, “If the judges need an extra six inches, maybe it should come out of their own pockets.”

Another sign of judicial insensitivity were the recent hearings held by the chief justice’s Commission on the Future of the Courts, which invited the disabled community to address access problems in the legal system. The commission, of course, selected an inaccessible site for the hearings.

Finally, four years after passage of the most sweeping civil-rights law since 1965, California’s appellate courts have decided a grand total of four Americans with Disabilities Act cases. Probably the quickest way to get the California Supreme Court’s attention on an access case is to point out that San Quentin’s gas chamber is handicapped-inaccessible.

If you are a private employer, merchant, real-estate developer, theater manager or restaurateur, you probably spent substantial time and money during the last year acquainting yourself with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Your business may have altered bathrooms, changed seating, modified work space, installed ramps or provided additional handicapped parking. In short, the law forced you to provide an accessible workplace or public accommodation at your expense for the public good.

The private sector must demand that government also obey the law. After all, the handicapped are the one minority group who everyone eventually gets to join, if they are lucky. Because, as we get older, the only alternative to becoming disabled is being dead.*