About midway through the morning last Friday, Stuart Ishimaru, the acting chairman of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, took a break from listening to testimony about changes to the Americans with Disabilities Act to talk about changes at the EEOC. Some critics of the ADA amendments say that there will be a flood of new complaints coming into the agency, but Ishimaru says he isn't worried.
"I don't buy the flood of litigation argument," he said. "We're trying to get bigger cases brought and better cases brought, cases that deal with systemic issues. How do you get as much bang for your buck as possible?"
Does that mean that the individual complaint doesn't have a chance? Ishimaru says the EEOC can't limit individual cases, because, "as an enforcement agency, I send the message that discrimination is illegal."
But, he said, "you can just get buried with individual cases. We will never be able to handle all the individual cases, so we have to find a balance as an enforcement agency."
Before he headed back to the panel, he made another interesting point: These amendments, signed into law by President Bush, make it easier for the disabled to bring discrimination cases because they broaden the definition of disabled. Now it's a matter of writing the regs to give everyone guidance on how the amendments will be applied, which was the point of last Friday's "listening" town hall meeting -- to give folks a chance to opine.
President Obama, Ishimaru said, totally supports the wider definition for "disabled." But for most of President Bush's time, the emphasis had been different -- more oriented on moving cases through the system, Ishimaru said. That left Ishimaru, a longtime commissioner, in the minority during that period of time. "I raised a lot of questions."
Now the emphasis is different, but managing the change within the agency is a challenge, Ishimaru said. "It is easier to be critic," he admitted. "And it also hard to turn the ship. You have to let people know there are new priorities and that it's a slow change."
Every day for 60 days, Inquirer staff writer Jane M. Von Bergen profiled someone from the ranks of the region’s unemployed.
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Cold winter for the jobless
- Ranks of long-term jobless are growing.
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How a printing plant failed
- Big gambles and bad decisions, oil prices and credit crises, even a New Zealand tycoon: All played a role in Downingtown.
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