Events and Workshops

Workshop: Disability Discrimination Lawsuits: Ensuring Equal Access to Advocacy for Clients with Mental and/or Developmental Disabilities 

People With Disabilities Foundation co-sponsored and presented Continuing Legal Education (CLE) at the Bar Association of San Francisco (BASF) on January 16, 2015. The course qualified for one hour of California CLE in Elimination of Bias.

A plaintiff with a psychiatric and/or developmental disability such as autism, severe anxiety, depression, dementia, or psychosis, e.g., schizophrenia, may have more difficulties pursuing discrimination litigation than someone with a physical or intellectual disability. This may be due to a vulnerable mental state (e.g., suicide), because of difficulty in establishing medical evidence, or due to the advocate’s fear or stigma of the disability.

Nevertheless, it is critical that these individuals have their rights protected. This program discussed ways to overcome these barriers to litigating on behalf of a client with a psychiatric and/or developmental disability. These solutions included strategies for different pathologies; these were based on strategies PWDF used successfully in U.S. federal court (e.g., reasonable accommodations for depositions) for clients with a variety of mental and/or developmental disabilities.

This workshop covered:

• Potential barriers people with mental and/or developmental disabilities face in exclusion from representation, including rationales that attorneys and advocates may use to exclude them;
• Ways to advocate for those whose disabilities cannot be measured through psychometric or other quantitative testing;
• Examined strategies for different pathologies based on approaches PWDF used successfully in U.S. federal court (e.g., reasonable accommodations for depositions) for clients with a variety of mental and/or developmental disabilities.

Date: Friday, January 16, 2015

Place: The Bar Association of San Francisco, 301 Battery Street, San Francisco, CA