Discrimination Against Disabled People: Your Rights and Remedies

If you have been treated unfairly because of a disability, federal law gives you enforceable rights and a set of specific remedies that depend on where the discrimination happened. The Americans with Disabilities Act is the broadest of these laws, and it works alongside the Fair Housing Act, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, and the Air Carrier Access Act to cover employment, housing, businesses open to the public, government services, air travel, and schools. Understanding your disability discrimination rights and remedies means knowing which statute applies to your situation, what the responsible party is required to do, and where to file if they don’t.

Who Is Protected

The ADA protects you if any one of three things is true: you have a physical or mental condition that significantly limits a major life activity, you have a documented history of such a condition, or others treat you as though you have one.¹

Major life activities include the everyday ones people expect, like walking, seeing, hearing, eating, sleeping, reading, and communicating, but the definition also reaches internal body functions, including the immune system, digestion, neurological health, and cell growth.¹ Conditions like diabetes, epilepsy, HIV, and many autoimmune disorders qualify even when medication keeps them under control.

The “record of” prong covers you if you are in remission from cancer or have a past mental health diagnosis that no longer limits you. The “regarded as” prong covers situations where an employer or business treats you badly because of a perceived condition, whether or not you actually have it. An employer who passes you over because they assume a limp means you can’t do the job has violated the ADA regardless of your actual capabilities.

What Counts as Disability Discrimination

Discrimination is rarely as blunt as a refusal to serve someone. The law recognizes several forms.

Disparate treatment is the direct kind: you are treated worse specifically because of your disability. Disparate impact happens when a rule looks neutral but falls harder on people with disabilities, such as a physical test unrelated to the actual job or a building reachable only by stairs.

Failure to accommodate is its own violation. When an employer, landlord, or business refuses reasonable adjustments that would let you participate equally, the refusal itself breaks the law, even without any hostility.

Retaliation is separately prohibited. No one can punish you for requesting an accommodation, filing a complaint, or taking part in a discrimination investigation, and the statute also bans coercion and intimidation aimed at discouraging you from exercising your rights.² Cut hours, sudden reassignments, or performance complaints that surface only after you asked for an accommodation are the pattern to watch for.

Reasonable Accommodations and the Interactive Process

The right to a reasonable accommodation is the most practical protection in disability law. It applies to employers, businesses open to the public, housing providers, and government agencies. If a modification would let you participate equally and doesn’t impose an extreme burden on the other party, they must provide it.

In the workplace, accommodations can include modified schedules, reassignment to a vacant position, assistive technology like screen readers, adjusted equipment, or changes to how training and exams are conducted.³ You do not need to identify the perfect solution yourself. The EEOC expects employers to engage in an “interactive process,” an informal conversation where you describe the barrier and the employer works with you to find something that works.⁴ Skipping that conversation and simply denying the request often becomes its own legal problem.

The obligation has a limit. An employer can decline an accommodation that would cause “undue hardship,” meaning significant difficulty or expense relative to the organization’s size and resources.³ Cost, the employer’s total financial resources, the number of employees, and the nature of the business all factor in. A Fortune 500 company will have a much harder time claiming hardship than a ten-person shop. In practice, most workplace accommodations cost very little.

Your Rights at Work

Title I of the ADA covers employers with 15 or more employees, including state and local governments, employment agencies, and labor unions.⁵ If your employer is smaller than that, the federal ADA does not reach your job, though many state laws do. Title I applies at every stage of employment: job postings, interviews, hiring, pay, promotions, training, benefits, and termination.

Employers cannot use qualification standards or tests that screen out people with disabilities unless those criteria are directly related to the job and consistent with business necessity.⁶ A warehouse can require lifting 50 pounds when the work actually involves heavy lifting. A desk job cannot.

Before making a job offer, an employer cannot ask whether you have a disability or inquire about the nature or severity of any condition. They can ask whether you are able to perform specific job functions, but the question has to focus on capability, not diagnosis. After a conditional offer, an employer may require a medical exam only if every new hire in that role faces the same requirement, and any medical information collected must be kept in separate confidential files.⁷ Once you are on the job, medical exams and disability-related inquiries generally require a specific, job-related reason backed by business necessity.

Your Rights With Businesses and Government Services

Access outside the workplace falls under two separate ADA titles.

Title II covers state and local governments and requires that all their programs, services, and activities be accessible. That includes courthouses and parks, and it also extends to government websites and digital services under a 2024 Department of Justice rule.⁸ Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act adds another layer, applying to any program or activity that receives federal financial assistance, whether run by a government agency, a university, a hospital, or a private nonprofit.⁹

Title III covers private businesses open to the public: restaurants, hotels, theaters, doctors’ offices, retail stores, and most others. It prohibits denying people the opportunity to participate, providing unequal service, or unnecessarily segregating customers with disabilities. Existing businesses must remove physical and communication barriers where doing so is “readily achievable,” meaning it can be done without much difficulty or expense. Installing a ramp, widening a doorway, or rearranging furniture are common examples. When barrier removal is not readily achievable, the business must offer its services another way, such as curbside pickup.¹⁰ Businesses must also provide auxiliary aids, such as sign language interpreters or large-print materials, unless doing so would fundamentally alter the service or create an undue burden.

Your Rights in Housing

The Fair Housing Act prohibits disability-based discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing.¹¹ A landlord cannot refuse to rent to you, impose different lease terms, or steer you to a different unit because of your disability.

Two housing-specific rights matter most in practice. First, landlords must let you make reasonable physical modifications to your unit at your own expense, such as installing grab bars, widening doorways, or lowering countertops. For rentals, the landlord can require you to agree to restore the unit to its original condition when you move out, within reason.

Second, landlords must make reasonable accommodations in rules and policies. Assistance animals are the most common example: even in a strict no-pet building, a landlord must allow a service animal or emotional support animal if it is necessary for your equal enjoyment of the housing. Pet deposits and breed restrictions don’t apply, because assistance animals aren’t pets under the law.¹¹

Your Rights in Transportation and School

The Air Carrier Access Act makes it illegal for airlines to discriminate against passengers with disabilities on any flight to, from, or within the United States.¹² Airlines must provide wheelchair assistance for boarding and deplaning, help with stowing assistive devices, and offer seating accommodations that meet disability-related needs, and they must do so safely and with dignity.¹³ On the ground, ADA Title II requires public transit systems running fixed bus or rail routes to also provide paratransit service for people who cannot use the regular system.

For college and graduate students, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act is the primary federal law, because nearly every college and university receives federal funding.⁹ Unlike K-12 special education, in higher education you must self-identify, request accommodations, and provide documentation of your disability. Schools must provide reasonable academic adjustments, such as extended testing time, note-takers, sign language interpreters, priority registration, screen-reading software, and reduced course loads, without altering fundamental program requirements. Every institution that receives federal funding must have a Section 504 or ADA coordinator to handle requests, and denials can be appealed to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.

Where to File a Complaint

Which agency handles your complaint depends on where the discrimination happened, and the deadlines are unforgiving.

Workplace complaints go to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. You can start through the EEOC’s online public portal or by mailing a signed letter with details about the discrimination to your nearest EEOC office. The baseline deadline is 180 calendar days from the date of the discriminatory act, extended to 300 days if your state or local government has its own disability discrimination enforcement agency, which most do.¹⁴ Confirm the state agency exists before relying on the longer deadline. After you file, the EEOC may investigate or invite both sides to mediate. If it declines to pursue your case, it issues a Notice of Right to Sue, and you then have 90 days to file in federal court. You can also request that notice yourself after 180 days.¹⁵

Complaints about businesses or government services under ADA Titles II and III go to the Department of Justice. You can submit online through the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division website or mail a completed ADA complaint form to the department’s Washington, D.C., office.¹⁶

Fair Housing Act complaints go to the Department of Housing and Urban Development. You can report discrimination online, call HUD’s fair housing hotline at 1-800-669-9777, or mail a form to your regional HUD office.¹⁷ File promptly, because federal law imposes time limits on housing complaints and delays can forfeit your right to a remedy.

What You Can Recover

Remedies vary sharply depending on which law applies, and this is where expectations most often collide with reality.

Employment

ADA Title I uses the same enforcement framework as Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.¹⁸ A successful claim can produce back pay covering wages lost from the violation through the resolution of the case, reinstatement, or front pay if returning to the job isn’t practical. Courts can also order the employer to change its policies.

For intentional discrimination, you may recover compensatory damages (out-of-pocket costs and emotional harm) and punitive damages, but federal law caps the combined total based on employer size:¹⁹

15 to 100 employees: $50,000
101 to 200 employees: $100,000
201 to 500 employees: $200,000
More than 500 employees: $300,000

Back pay and front pay are not subject to those caps, so for workers at smaller companies, uncapped wage-loss awards often make up most of the recovery. State laws may allow additional damages beyond the federal limits.

Businesses and Public Accommodations

Under federal Title III, a private lawsuit against a business can only produce injunctive relief (a court order requiring the business to fix the problem) and possibly attorney’s fees. Federal Title III does not allow private plaintiffs to collect monetary damages. Some states have their own accessibility laws that do permit compensatory or punitive damages, and pairing a state-law claim with the federal suit can fill that gap. When the DOJ brings its own Title III enforcement action, it can seek civil penalties and monetary damages on behalf of affected individuals.

Housing

Fair Housing Act complaints investigated by HUD can result in monetary damages, civil penalties, and injunctive relief. If HUD finds reasonable cause and the case goes to an administrative hearing, a judge can award actual damages and impose civil penalties. You can also elect to have the case heard in federal court, where juries can award compensatory and punitive damages without the statutory caps that apply to employment cases.

1
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 US Code 12102 – Definition of Disability
2
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 12203 – Prohibition Against Retaliation and Coercion
3
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 12111 – Definitions
4
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Enforcement Guidance on Reasonable Accommodation and Undue Hardship Under the ADA
5
ADA.gov. Introduction to the Americans with Disabilities Act
6
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 12112 – Discrimination
7
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 12112 – Discrimination
8
ADA.gov. Fact Sheet – New Rule on the Accessibility of Web Content and Mobile Apps
9
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 USC 794 – Nondiscrimination Under Federal Grants and Programs
10
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 12182 – Prohibition of Discrimination by Public Accommodations
11
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 3604 – Discrimination in the Sale or Rental of Housing
12
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 49 USC 41705 – Discrimination Against Individuals with Disabilities
13
US Department of Transportation. Traveling with a Disability
14
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. How to File a Charge of Employment Discrimination
15
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Filing a Lawsuit
16
ADA.gov. File a Complaint
17
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Report Housing Discrimination
18
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 12117 – Enforcement
19
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 1981a – Damages in Cases of Intentional Discrimination