Justin Dart. Jr., former Commissioner of the Rehabilitation Services Administration and Medal of Freedom Award winner, Andrew J. Imparato, President of the American Association of People with Disabilities and Bob Kafka and Babs Johnson, National ADAPTorganizers, will join Robert Coward, Chairperson of Capital Area ADAPTas featured speakers. The entire Rolling Freedom Express tour will remain in Washington, D.C. to participate in the March for Justice on October 3 in support of the ADA.

Evocative of the freedom rides of the 1960s African-American civil rights movement, the Rolling Freedom Express will highlight the rights of all people with disabilities and call for support of the ADA and the constitutionality of the ADA under the 14th Amendment. The case, currently before the Supreme Court, University of Alabama v Garrett, will be argued before the Supreme Court on October 11. It involves two employment discrimination cases filed against the state of Alabama one by a woman with breast cancer and another involving a man with severe asthma.

The fundamental issue to be decided by the court is whether Congress had the constitutional authority under the 14th amendment to enact ADA. The 14th amendment, passed after the Civil War, guarantees all citizens equal protection under the law and a right to due process of law.

Garrett is the latest in a series of cases in which states have challenged Congresss power to enact legislation regulating state conduct. If the court rules in favor of states rights over the civil rights of persons with disabilities, it will set us back a decade to where there was no legal standard to prevent discrimination against people with disabilities. The ADA, passed in 1990, was based on congressional findings of a long history of discrimination against people with disabilities, and recognition that states had not been doing enough to alleviate that discrimination. In fact, states were often the worst offenders.

"When Rolling Freedom Express pulls into Washington, it will send a message to politicians and policy makers that those of us with disabilities will not sit idly by and watch as our civil rights are undermined," stated Robert Coward of Capital Area ADAPT.

FOR MORE INFORMATION on American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today (ADAPT) Please visit our website at http://www.adapt.org/

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