This one. You make reasonable accommodations for people who can't follow the normal rules. This is how the ADA is worded - employers have to make reasonable accommodations as long as it doesn't prevent the person from doing their job.
How do you justify making accommodations just for some people? Why not for all? Rights should be equal, not based on any discriminatory criteria.
You define reasonable by using reason. You examine the situation and try to see if you can make an accommodation for the person that lets them do their job while not sacrificing performance. If you can, you do it.
You justify making these accommodations because you realize that there are some people who have conditions that make following the same routines that most people do impossible. We also realize that if you let everyone have those accommodations, it will not be sustainable, so you grant special rights to certain people based on this.
The handicap parking is a perfect example. Or pre-boarding flights for people in wheelchairs. Obviously you can't give everyone handicap parking, because that is the same as giving no one handicap parking. Some people can't travel as far, so we let them get the spots up front.
Same with pre-boarding. If everyone pre-boarded, it would just be boarding. But we also know that some groups need more time and space to board, like people in wheelchairs. So we let them board early.
I never understand this attitude that we aren't allowed to accommodate people who have hardships because it is unfair on people without those hardships. Like, what? The unfair part is that they HAVE the handicap in the first place, we are just trying to make it a little more fair.
Life isn't fair, so we make laws that are a little unfair in the opposite direction to try to even it out.
If you add the capability to do it then I can give you a thousand reasons why someone should need it. They could be photosensitive and need to avoid sunlight, or agoraphobic, or have children they can't leave home alone, or follow a religion that requires them not to look upon an uncovered woman who is not their wife. They could be poor and unable to afford the travel, or live far away from the meeting place.
By the time I'm done listing reasons, there won't be anybody left without one.
The same is true for parking spaces, but giving everyone the closest parking space is not an option. How is allowing anyone to attend remotely not an option?
It is not an absolute formula. You have to use judgement, and sometimes you are going to get it wrong on the boundaries.
Reasonable in this case means providing a way for them allowing them to do their job in spite of their limitations. The "privilege" they are being granted is being able to work at all, which is a privilege most people have naturally and take for granted.
The courts do it. And they’ve been doing it ever since the ADA was passed. It’s a system that seems to work quite well.
You want to make disabled people unfit? OK, change the Wisconsin Constitution. (Even if you did, I'm pretty sure it'd be illegal under ADA? But I might be mistaken about that?)
In any case, until you do, if the people vote in a disabled person, then that person is the lawmaker representing those people. Full stop.
We don't just get rid of someone else' lawmaker because we don't like something about him or her. The law likes something about that person, and that's the fact they were elected.
You can't tell people who they can and cannot vote for. Or rather, you can, but you have to do it explicitly in the Constitution. (At least in Wisconsin you do.)
The only right way is to give equal treatment to everyone.
Your version of equality is worthless, your backbone is just an excuse to make yourself feel better.
Everyone is entitled to enter a restroom or no one is. I can get behind that. No more multi-toilet rooms with stall gaps.
- make all the meetings remote for anyone?
- make it a job requirement to be physically present? (like going to the office for regular employees)
- make special amendments for some people?
Are there other options?
Not sure how to look at this. I work from home part of the week because I am not interacting with almost anyone in the closest branch of my company, but I assume that going to the office is an obligation in certain cases and not being able to do it would make me unfit for that job. In this case it is not a job, but close enough for me: it is paid by taxpayers money.