Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act of 2008 - ADAAA

In 1990, Congress passed the Americans with Disabilities Act, or ADA. This law protected people with certain disabilities against discrimination. Because...yeah, treating the disabled like dirt without repercussions used to be A Thing. Mocking people with speech impediments, wheelchair-tipping, you name it. People used to be able to get away with that stuff. The ADA made it...not okay.

The U.S. Supreme Court later made several rulings limiting the scope of the law. To reset some of these protections, Congress returned to the ADA in 2008 with a series of amendments that eventually became the ADAAA. (Further future revisions could lead to the ADAAAAA and the ADAAAAAAA, pronounced as if the female lead in A Streetcar Named Desire were named "Ada.") The updated disability protections went into effect on January 1, 2009.