Ted Poe: “I want to thank the chairman for his long work on this issue, and I want to thank a couple of the cosponsors--this is a…”

“I want to thank the chairman for his long work on this issue, and I want to thank a couple of the cosponsors--this is a bipartisan bill--Congressman Peters, Congresswoman Speier, and Mr. Ken Calvert, who have worked on this for years. I appreciate the words of the gentleman who just spoke, a great leader in civil rights movement, but as he probably knows, title VII of the Civil Rights Act does require notice, as well as this legislation hopefully will do. And let me be clear. This legislation makes the ADA better because it requires that businesses be told and be given a chance to fix the problem if there is a problem. Under current law, that is not the case. The goal of this bill, the ADA legislation that we have, is to have accommodations for the disabled and to make sure businesses comply with that accommodation. When a lawsuit is filed, many times the business is never told what the problem is, and it may be a year or longer before that lawsuit ends up in a Federal court. Under this legislation, businesses, once they are put on notice, they have 180 days to fix the problem or make substantial progress. If the goal of the ADA is to get problems fixed, the legislation we have here helps that. But what is taking place in our country, Mr.…”