We're From The Government And We're Here To Help You

John Stossel has a good column on the Americans With Disabilities Act and (who'd have guessed?) its perverse outcomes. The article contains an interview with the former head of the Clinton EEOC, who does not exactly cover himself in glory. It concludes thusly:

Complicated laws like the ADA eventually hurt the people they were meant to help. The ADA has led many employers to avoid the disabled. One poll found that since the ADA was passed, the percentage of disabled men who were employed dropped. "Once you hire them, you can never fire them. They are lawsuit bombs," one employer said. "So we just tell them the job has been filled."

This unintended consequence of the ADA shouldn't have been a surprise. If you give some workers extra power to sue, those workers become potential "bombs," and some employers avoid them.

Politicians bragged that the ADA "fixed the discrimination problem." But what really happened is that lawyers got richer, and the disabled got fewer opportunities.