In November 2012, when I was a student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, I cast my vote in one of the dining halls. As someone who grew up in California, I was excited to feel like my vote “mattered” in a swing state. The building had an elevator and was relatively easy to enter if someone had a cane or needed a wheelchair.
A year and a half later, during my final weeks at UNC, my polling place had changed to the local Hillel, just off campus, during the 2014 primaries. As I approached the building, the first thing I noticed was that there were two steps to enter, which made me think about how harder it might be for my physically disabled classmates to vote, not to mention my disabled Jewish classmates who wanted to vote. practice their faith freely and meet similar people.
I thought about those moments earlier this month when early voting began in swing states like Georgia and North Carolina. The difference in these structures tells a story about how religious institutions are exempt from the same regulations that require other private businesses and government buildings to accommodate people with disabilities. And it could jeopardize those people’s ability to cast their votes.
A major reason for the discrepancy comes from the Rehabilitation Act of 1974 and the Americans with Disabilities Act. Section 504 of the ADA states that employers and organizations that receive financial assistance from the federal government may not discriminate against people with disabilities. Most famously, disability rights activists led by Judith Heumann, who died last year, occupied a federal building in 1977 to force the federal government to implement that section.
But the ADA explicitly exempts religious institutions from Title III, which prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities in places of public accommodation, such as businesses open to the public. Religious organizations such as the Southern Baptist Convention and the Catholic League actually lobbied for protections when the law was written. William Bentley Ball, who was called God’s trial attorney, specifically warned that religious freedom “will be directly affected if churches and religious schools are not expressly exempt from the terms of the ADA.”
A new report from Rutgers University shows that more than 40 million eligible voters are disabled. Many of them may have to adjust their plans to avoid polling stations that are difficult to access. According to Christianity Today, about 20% of polling places are located in churches. And the raw number of religious institutions serving as polling places masks the real challenges, as religious institutions may be the only polling places in a county.
“Once you start breaking down the numbers and breaking down the data, you see a different picture, where in certain states this could be as high as 50% – so half of all polling places – are in churches or religious institutions” , says Jasmine Harris. , a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania told me.
Take the battleground states of Georgia and North Carolina. On the first day of early voting in Georgia, more than 300,000 people cast their votes. More than 1 million people voted in North Carolina. People coming out to vote en masse is a moment of celebration in the United States. But obstacles to that turnout remain: In North Carolina, 25% of polling places are in churches. In Georgia the share is 32%.
Harris also noted that just because a polling place has an accessibility symbol does not mean it is fully accessible to people with disabilities.
“That only gets you so far. That would just tell you if the external structure has any barriers, any architectural barriers,” she said. But that doesn’t tell us what the training looks like for poll workers or whether the technology is accessible to people who are blind or visually impaired.
“We have a very messy system that is really problematic and in the guise of accessibility,” she said. And while it may not be a problem for a church to be a polling place in a city with many other options, in a place like Davidson Township, Pennsylvania, with a population of just 549, the only polling location is a church, meaning voters with disabilities may have few alternatives. According to Christianity Today, in the 2020 election, every polling place in Rincon, Georgia, population 11,000, was a church.
This is not to say that non-religious institutions are perfect. Far from it. Thirty-four years after the ADA went into effect, many public accommodations and even government buildings remain completely inaccessible. But the fact that there is a specific exception for religious entities only creates an additional barrier for people with disabilities. And ironically, it prevents them from using their voices to change circumstances and make the world more accessible.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
