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This disability rights timeline lists events relating to the civil rights of people with disabilities in the United States of America, including court decisions, the passage of legislation, activists' actions, significant abuses of people with disabilities, and the founding of various organizations. Although the disability rights movement itself began in the 1960s, advocacy for the rights of people with disabilities started much earlier and continues to the present.
The fine of $1 equates to more than $20 in 2018.Any person who is diseased, maimed, mutilated, or in any way deformed, so as to be an unsightly or disgusting object, or an improper person to be allowed in or on the streets, highways, thoroughfares, or public places in the city, shall not therein or thereon expose himself to public view, under the penalty of a fine of $1 for each offense (Chicago City Code 1881) [8]
An 18-year-old girl with agitated depression successively had her upper and lower molars extracted, a tonsillectomy, sinus drainage, treatment for an infected cervix, removal of intestinal adhesions—all without effecting improvement in her psychiatric condition. Then the remainder of her teeth were removed and she was sent home, pronounced cured. [25]
Andrew Scull argues that Cotton's obsession with focal sepsis as the root cause of mental illness "persisted in spite of all evidence to the contrary and the frightening incidence of death and harm from the operations he initiated". [25] Cotton's approach attracted some detractors, but the medical establishment of the day did not effectively renounce or discipline him. [25]
There must be evidence of recent behavior to justify the substantial likelihood of serious bodily harm in the near future. Moments in the past, when an individual may have considered harming themselves or another, do not qualify the individual as meeting the criteria. ("Near" means close, short, or draws near.) [74] Examinations may last up to 72 hours after a person is deemed medically stable and occur in over 100 Florida Department of Children and Families-designated receiving facilities statewide. There are many possible outcomes following examination of the patient. This includes the release of the individual to the community (or other community placement), a petition for involuntary inpatient placement (what some call civil commitment), involuntary outpatient placement (what some call outpatient commitment or assisted treatment orders), or voluntary treatment (if the person is competent to consent to voluntary treatment and consents to voluntary treatment). The involuntary outpatient placement language in the Baker Act took effect as part of the Baker Act reform in 2005.
On occasion psychiatrists are asked for an opinion about an individual who is in the light of public attention or who has disclosed information about himself/herself through public media. In such circumstances, a psychiatrist may share with the public his or her expertise about psychiatric issues in general. However, it is unethical for a psychiatrist to offer a professional opinion unless he or she has conducted an examination and has been granted proper authorization for such a statement. [94]
any individual who (A) has a physical or mental disability which for such individual constitutes or results in a substantial handicap to employment and (B) can reasonably be expected to benefit in terms of employability from vocational rehabilitation services provided pursuant to titles I and III of this Act. [105]
The 1974 amendments substituted a much broader definition of "handicapped individual" applicable to employment by the federal government (Section 501 of the Act), modification or elimination of architectural and transportation barriers (Section 502), employment by federal contractors (section 503) and to programs receiving federal financial assistance (Section 504) that was not related to employability through vocational rehabilitation services. The 1974 amendments clarified that a handicapped individual meant
any person who (A) has a physical or mental impairment which substantially limits one or more of such person's major life activities, (B) has a record of such an impairment, or (C) is regarded as having such an impairment.
Congress adopted that definition in the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, substituting the term "disability" for "handicapped." [106]
Although Herbin did provide evidence of substantial drug abuse in the past, he was unable to provide expert witness testimony of any mental disorder. The court held that the substance abuse did not serve as evidence for a "settled insanity" defense alone without the link to a mental disorder. No lay witnesses testified as to any behavior consistent with insanity, even if lay testimony were admissible to establish the insanity defense in Virginia. Also, although Herbin did provide an extensive history of drug and sexual abuse, the court said no evidence showed either of these issues were causes or results of a mental disorder. Therefore, the appeals court upheld his conviction. [260]"The weight of authority in this country recognizes an insanity defense that is based on a mental disease or defect produced by long-term substance abuse." Commonwealth v. Herd, 413 Mass. 834, 604 N.E.2d 1294, 1299 (1992). At the same time, "evidence of mere narcotics addiction, standing alone and without other physiological or psychological involvement, raises no issue of such a mental defect or disease as can serve as a basis for the insanity defense." United States v. Lyons, 731 F.2d 243, 245 (5th Cir.1984) (citing cases). Although appellant produced evidence of long-term and severe drug abuse, he did not present any evidence that he was suffering from any mental disease as a result of this drug abuse. See Hooks v. State, 534 So.2d 329, 353 (Ala.Crim.App.1987), aff'd sub nom. Ex parte Hooks, 534 So.2d 371 (Ala.1988). – See more at: https://caselaw.findlaw.com/va-court-of-appeals/1349937.html#sthash.YduwJJE7.dpuf
The outcome was that UPS agreed to pay a $5.8 million award and agreed to a comprehensive accommodations program that was implemented in their facilities throughout the country.
The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 or ADA is a civil rights law that prohibits discrimination based on disability. It affords similar protections against discrimination to Americans with disabilities as the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which made discrimination based on race, religion, sex, national origin, and other characteristics illegal, and later sexual orientation and gender identity. In addition, unlike the Civil Rights Act, the ADA also requires covered employers to provide reasonable accommodations to employees with disabilities, and imposes accessibility requirements on public accommodations.
The insanity defense, also known as the mental disorder defense, is an affirmative defense by excuse in a criminal case, arguing that the defendant is not responsible for their actions due to a psychiatric disease at the time of the criminal act. This is contrasted with an excuse of provocation, in which the defendant is responsible, but the responsibility is lessened due to a temporary mental state. It is also contrasted with the justification of self defense or with the mitigation of imperfect self-defense. The insanity defense is also contrasted with a finding that a defendant cannot stand trial in a criminal case because a mental disease prevents them from effectively assisting counsel, from a civil finding in trusts and estates where a will is nullified because it was made when a mental disorder prevented a testator from recognizing the natural objects of their bounty, and from involuntary civil commitment to a mental institution, when anyone is found to be gravely disabled or to be a danger to themself or to others.
Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200 (1927), is a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court, written by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., in which the Court ruled that a state statute permitting compulsory sterilization of the unfit, including the intellectually disabled, "for the protection and health of the state" did not violate the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Despite the changing attitudes in the coming decades regarding sterilization, the Supreme Court has never expressly overturned Buck v. Bell. It is widely believed to have been weakened by Skinner v. Oklahoma, 316 U.S. 535 (1942), which involved compulsory sterilization of male habitual criminals. Legal scholar and Holmes biographer G. Edward White, in fact, wrote, "the Supreme Court has distinguished the case [Buck v. Bell] out of existence". In addition, federal statutes, including the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, provide protections for people with disabilities, defined as both physical and mental impairments.
Skinner v. State of Oklahoma, ex rel. Williamson, 316 U.S. 535 (1942), is a unanimous United States Supreme Court ruling that held that laws permitting the compulsory sterilization of criminals are unconstitutional as it violates a person's rights given under the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution, specifically the Equal Protection Clause and the Due Process Clause. The relevant Oklahoma law applied to "habitual criminals" but excluded white-collar crimes from carrying sterilization penalties.
The Rehabilitation Act of 1973 is a United States federal law, codified at 29 U.S.C. § 701 et seq. The principal sponsor of the bill was Rep. John Brademas (D-IN-3). The Rehabilitation Act of 1973 replaces preexisting laws to extend and revise the authorization of grants to States for vocational rehabilitation services, with special emphasis on services to those with the most severe disabilities, to expand special Federal responsibilities and research and training programs with respect to individuals with disabilities, to establish special responsibilities in the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare for coordination of all programs with respect to individuals with disabilities within the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, and for other purposes. It created the Rehabilitation Services Administration.
In United States and Canadian law, competence concerns the mental capacity of an individual to participate in legal proceedings or transactions, and the mental condition a person must have to be responsible for his or her decisions or acts. Competence is an attribute that is decision-specific. Depending on various factors which typically revolve around mental function integrity, an individual may or may not be competent to make a particular medical decision, a particular contractual agreement, to execute an effective deed to real property, or to execute a will having certain terms.
E (Mrs) v Eve, [1986] 2 S.C.R. 388 is a judgment by the Supreme Court of Canada regarding a mother's request for the consent of the court to have her disabled daughter sterilized. This was a landmark case which is influential in Canadian legal decisions involving proxy-consented, non-therapeutic medical procedures performed on people of diminished mental capacity.
The Education for All Handicapped Children Act was enacted by the United States Congress in 1975. This act required all public schools accepting federal funds to provide equal access to education and one free meal a day for children with physical and mental disabilities. Public schools were required to evaluate children with disabilities and create an educational plan with parent input that would emulate as closely as possible the educational experience of non-disabled students. The act was an amendment to Part B of the Education of the Handicapped Act enacted in 1966.
Ford v. Wainwright, 477 U.S. 399 (1986), was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case that upheld the common law rule that the insane cannot be executed; therefore the petitioner is entitled to a competency evaluation and to an evidentiary hearing in court on the question of their competency to be executed.
New York City Board of Education v. Tom F., 552 U.S. 1 (2007), is a legal case in the United States. The case involves the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and tuition reimbursement. The case was granted certiorari by the Supreme Court. Oral arguments took place October 1, 2007. The Court ruled in favor of Tom F. nine days later, on October 10, 2007, affirming the appellate court's decision with a 4–4 split. The decision did not list which justices voted which way, except that Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy did not take part. Note that as a majority of justices failed to adopt an opinion in favor of either the school district or the student, the decision of the lower appellate court, permitting tuition reimbursement, remained unaltered.
Florida State Hospital (FSH) is a hospital and psychiatric hospital in Chattahoochee, Florida. Established in 1876, it was Florida's only state mental institution until 1947. It currently has a capacity of 1,042 patients. The hospital's current Administration Building is on the National Register of Historic Places.
An emotional support animal (ESA) is an animal that provides support to individuals with a mental health or psychiatric disability. Emotional support animals are not required to be trained. Any animal that provides support, comfort, or aid, to an individual through companionship, unconditional positive regard, and affection may be regarded as an emotional support animal.
Olmstead v. L.C., 527 U.S. 581 (1999), is a United States Supreme Court case regarding discrimination against people with mental disabilities. The Supreme Court held that under the Americans with Disabilities Act, individuals with mental disabilities have the right to live in the community rather than in institutions if, in the words of the opinion of the Court, "the State's treatment professionals have determined that community placement is appropriate, the transfer from institutional care to a less restrictive setting is not opposed by the affected individual, and the placement can be reasonably accommodated, taking into account the resources available to the State and the needs of others with mental disabilities." The case was brought by the Atlanta Legal Aid Society on behalf of Lois Curtis.
United States v. Georgia, 546 U.S. 151 (2006), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court decided that the protection of Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA), passed by the U.S. Congress, extends to persons held in a state prison and protects prison inmates from discrimination on the basis of disability by prison personnel. Specifically, the court held that Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, 42 U.S.C. §§ 12131–12165., is a proper use of Congressional power under the Fourteenth Amendment, Section 5, making it applicable to prison system officials.
United States federal laws governing offenders with mental diseases or defects provide for the evaluation and handling of defendants who are suspected of having mental diseases or defects. The laws were completely revamped by the Insanity Defense Reform Act in the wake of the John Hinckley Jr. verdict.
This disability rights timeline lists events outside the United States relating to the civil rights of people with disabilities, including court decisions, the passage of legislation, activists' actions, significant abuses of people with disabilities, and the founding of various organizations. Although the disability rights movement itself began in the 1960s, advocacy for the rights of people with disabilities started much earlier and continues to the present.
According to a 2012 survey by Statistics Canada, around 3.8 million adult Canadians reported being "limited in their daily activities due to a disability". This represented 13.7% of the adult population. The three most-prevalent forms of disability in Canada are chronic pain issues, mobility, and flexibility limitations. Around 11% of Canadian adults experience one of these disability types, and 40% of those people have had all three at the same time. Disabled people in Canada have historically experienced many forms of discrimination and abuse, such as segregation, institutionalization, and compulsory sterilization. They were not given the same rights as non-disabled people until the end of the 1970s, when the Coalition of Provincial Organizations of the Handicapped initiated significant changes. Legislation intended to protect disabled Canadians include the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the Canadian Human Rights Act, and the Employment Equity Act.
The Virginia Sterilization Act of 1924 was a U.S. state law in Virginia for the sterilization of institutionalized persons "afflicted with hereditary forms of insanity that are recurrent, idiocy, imbecility, feeble-mindedness or epilepsy”. It greatly influenced the development of eugenics in the twentieth century. The act was based on model legislation written by Harry H. Laughlin and challenged by a case that led to the United States Supreme Court decision of Buck v. Bell. The Supreme Court upheld the law as constitutional and it became a model law for sterilization laws in other states. Justice Holmes wrote that a patient may be sterilized "on complying with the very careful provisions by which the act protects the patients from possible abuse." Between 1924 and 1979, Virginia sterilized over 7,000 individuals under the act. The act was never declared unconstitutional; however, in 2001, the Virginia General Assembly passed a joint resolution apologizing for the misuse of "a respectable, 'scientific' veneer to cover activities of those who held blatantly racist views." In 2015, the Assembly agreed to compensate individuals sterilized under the act.
Sterilization law is the area of law, that concerns a person's purported right to choose or refuse reproductive sterilization and when a given government may limit it. In the United States, it is typically understood to touch on federal and state constitutional law, statutory law, administrative law, and common law. This article primarily focuses on laws concerning compulsory sterilization that have not been repealed or abrogated, i.e. are still good laws, in whole or in part, in each jurisdiction.
The day-old daughter of Mr. and Mrs. William Meter of 121 North Cicero Avenue, died today at the German-American Hospital, where Dr. Harry J. Haiselden refused to perform an operation which he acknowledged probably would save the child's life. Physician, Who Acted Similarly in the Bollinger Case, Suspects Pre-Natal Influence.
At 4am on November 12, 1915, a woman named Anna Bollinger gave birth at the German-American Hospital in Chicago. The baby was somewhat deformed and suffered from extreme intestinal and rectal abnormalities, as well as other complications. The delivering physicians awakened Dr Harry Haiselden, the hospital's chief of staff. Haiselden came in at once. He consulted with colleagues. There was great disagreement over whether the child could be saved. But Haiselden decided the baby was too afflicted and fundamentally not worth saving. It would be killed. The method: denial of treatment.
Dr. Harry J. Haiselden, who refused to perform an operation on the Bollinger baby because he believed the child would be a hopeless defective, will be expelled from membership in the Chicago Medical Society if the council of that body approves the findings of the Ethical Relations Committee.
The film was inspired by the sensational case of Dr. Harry Haiselden, a Chicago surgeon who convinced the parents of a newborn with multiple disabilities to let the child die instead of performing surgery that would save its life. In the film, Haiselden actually plays himself, a wise doctor who attends the birth of a child born with congenital syphilis – incurable at the time and a major cause of congenital disabilities. Two other doctors interfere, out of personal pride and misplaced benevolence, and try to convince the woman to save the child's life. The woman is forced to choose.
It is clear that the doses involved were low and that it is extremely unlikely that any of the children who were used as subjects were harmed as a consequence.
... psychiatrists can discuss mental health issues with the news media, but that it is unethical for them to diagnose mental illnesses in people they have not examined and whose consent they have not received.
If all of the above procedural requirements have been followed, we hold that a probate judge may permit a sterilization after making specific written findings from clear and convincing evidence, that it is in the best interests of the incapacitated ward, rather than the parents' or the public's convenience, to do so.
This appeal raises the question of whether the superior court has the authority to order the sterilization of a mental incompetent upon petition by the incompetent's legal guardian. We conclude that the superior court, as a court of general jurisdiction, does have the authority to entertain and act upon such a petition. [...] Basic notions of procedural due process require that the incompetent be afforded a full judicial hearing at which medical testimony is presented and the incompetent, through a guardian ad litem, is allowed to present proof and cross-examine witnesses. The advocates of the proposed operation bear the heavy burden of proving by clear and convincing evidence that sterilization is in the best interests of the incompetent.
The Project filed Poe v. Lynchburg Training School on behalf of 8,000 women involuntarily sterilized by a state mental institution in Virginia. In a settlement reached in 1985, the state agreed to inform the women about what had been done to them and to help them get counseling and medical treatment.
We conclude, therefore, that as to incompetent minors circuit courts, acting in pursuance of their inherent parens patriae authority, have subject matter jurisdiction to consider a petition for an order authorizing a guardian to consent to the sterilization of an incompetent minor. [...] In addition to these factors, the trial court, before authorizing sterilization as being in the best interests of the incompetent minor, must find by clear and convincing evidence that the requested operative procedure is medically necessary to preserve the life or physical or mental health of the incompetent minor.
The officers in the unit have carried Tasers since shortly after the 1984 death of Eleanor Bumpurs, a disturbed, obese woman who was shotgunned to death by an officer in her apartment after she escaped a restraint and brandished a knife.
Accordingly, we hold that the probate court has jurisdiction to hear an application by a guardian for authorization to consent to an extraordinary procedure under M.C.L. § 330.1629; M.S.A. § 14.800(629), including sterilization, and to order such authorization if it determines the procedure is in the ward's best interests.
First, the party seeking sterilization may demonstrate by clear and convincing evidence that the ward, if competent, would have wished to be sterilized and would not have objected to the chosen method of sterilization. If the party seeking sterilization can meet this burden after all procedures have been followed and all relevant evidence has been taken into account, then the court may issue an order authorizing sterilization of the ward. The party opposing sterilization can attempt to produce clear and convincing evidence that if the ward were competent, she either (1) would not have wished to be sterilized if she could have foreseen her current situation, or (2) would not have consented to the chosen method of sterilization. If either of these things can be demonstrated, then following the substituted judgment standard provided for in the Probate Act, the ward's wishes prevail and the court should deny the petition for sterilization. No analysis of the ward's best interests is necessary under either of these scenarios. However, if the ward's substituted judgment cannot be proved by clear and convincing evidence either way, then the Probate Act instructs us to proceed to a best interests analysis, following the six Terwilliger factors outlined above. As discussed, the petition for sterilization should be granted if and only if the proponent of the petition can prove it is in the ward's best interests by clear and convincing evidence, when compared to other, less intrusive alternatives currently available to the ward, as well as potential future alternatives that may become available due to scientific or medical advances. If the court concludes, after analysis of all the above factors, that sterilization by the petitioned-for method is proven to be in the ward's best interests by clear and convincing evidence, then a petition authorizing the procedure may issue. Otherwise, the petition must be denied.