Celebrating the 25th Anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act

203 Pages·2015·11.19 MB·English

by  Albany Law School

th
Celebrating the 25
Anniversary of the
Americans with
Disabilities Act

September 18, 2015
Celebrating the 25th Anniversary of the
Americans with Disabilities Act

With Special Thanks to:

Partner
Northern Rivers Family Services

Associate
Cohoes Savings Foundation

New York State Industries for the Disabled, Inc.

Our Ability, Inc.

Friend
Catholic Charities Disabilities Services

Center for Disability Services

The Center for Special Needs Trust Administration, Inc.

Elder Law and Special Needs Section of the
New York State Bar Association

Honest Weight Food Co-Op

The Legal Aid Society of Northeastern New York

M&T Bank

National Academy of Elder Law
Attorneys, Inc. – New York Chapter

New York State Commission for the Blind

New York Association on Independent Living, Inc.

Schuyler Center for Analysis and Advocacy
Celebrating the 25th Anniversary of the
Americans with Disabilities Act

Friday, September 18, 2015

Agenda

8:30am – 9:00am Registration

9:15am - 9:30am Opening Remarks
Alicia Ouellette, President and Dean
Albany Law School

9:30am - 10:15am Key Note Address
Curtis L. Decker, J.D.
National Disability Rights Network

10:15am - 10:30am Break

10:30am - 12:00pm Panel One: ADA Compliance in Public and Private
Institutions

Moderator:
Kirk M. Lewis, Esq., Executive Director
Schenectady ARC

Panelists:
Roger Bearden, Esq., Counsel
Office of Persons with Developmental Disabilities

Kirsten Dunn, ’16
Albany Law School

Elise Friello, J.D. ’15
New York State Dispute Resolution Association, Inc.

Sheila E. Shea, Esq.’86
Mental Hygiene Legal Service

12:00pm - 1:15pm Luncheon Speaker
John Robinson, Managing Partner & Chief Executive Officer
Our Ability
1:15pm - 2:45pm Panel Two: Litigating ADA Claims: A Review of Major
Cases

Moderator:
Paul Kietzman, Esq. ’72, Senior Counsel
NYSARC, Inc.

Panelists:
Cathleen B. Clark, AUSA, Assistant United States Attorney
Northern District of New York

Timothy A. Clune, Esq. ’86, Executive Director
Disability Rights New York

Honorable Robert Levy
United States Magistrate Judge
Eastern District of New York

2:45pm - 3:00pm Break

3:00pm - 4:00pm Panel Three: Disability in (Legal) Practice: Has the ADA
Helped?

Moderator:
Susan Arbetter
The Capitol Pressroom

Panelists:
Erica M. Molina, Esq. ’12
Disability Rights New York

Scott P. Quesnel, Esq. ’05
Girvin and Ferlazzo. PC

Benjamin B. Thapa, Esq. ’11
Civil Service Employees Association

Eric E. Wilke, Esq. ’05
Civil Service Employees Association

4:00pm Concluding Remarks and Reception
Celebrating the 25th Anniversary of the
Americans with Disabilities Act

Friday, September 18, 2015

SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES

SUSAN ARBETTER is the Emmy Award-winning host and producer of the syndicated
public radio program the Capitol Pressroom, which broadcasts live from the State
Capitol in Albany, New York. Arbetter is also the Director of News & Public Affairs for
Syracuse public broadcaster WCNY. Her radio interviews have been cited by local,
statewide and national publications, including the New York Times; Washington Post;
Wall Street Journal; Newsday; NY Daily News; NY Post; Buffalo News; Syracuse Post
Standard; Albany Times Union; and City and State. Her guests are leaders in politics,
policy, law and business representing the entire political spectrum. Recent guests
include Governor Andrew Cuomo; Regents Chancellor Meryl Tisch; Attorney General
Eric Schneiderman and Comptroller Tom DiNapoli. The Capitol Pressroom can be
heard on over twenty NPR & non-commercial public radio stations throughout upstate
New York. Arbetter previously served as News Director at WAMC Northeast Public
Radio and is one of the creators and co-hosts of the station’s award-winning
Roundtable Show. In addition, she created, produced and hosted the political show New
York Now, as well as a number of statewide public television specials for public
television station WMHT in Schenectady. Arbetter is the recipient of more than thirty
awards for electronic journalism, including the 2015 Women’s Press Club’s “Excellence
in Career Achievement” and a 2013 Emmy Award for Best Public Affairs Series for the
television show “Insight,” which she produces for WCNY Public Broadcasting each
week. She has also received awards for radio broadcasting including Edward R.
Murrow, Scripps-Howard, AP, PRNDI & NYSBA, among others.

ROGER BEARDEN, ESQ. is Deputy Commissioner and General Counsel at the New
York State Office for People with Developmental Disabilities. He previously served as
Governor Andrew M. Cuomo’s Special Counsel for Olmstead, where he was
responsible for directing the activities of the Olmstead Plan Development and
Implementation Cabinet, and as Chair of the New York State Commission on Quality of
Care and Advocacy for Persons with Disabilities. Prior to joining the Cuomo
Administration, Bearden served as Director of the Disability Law Center of the New York
Lawyers for the Public Interest in New York City. He was responsible for supervising
project directors and program staff, and served as lead attorney on major law reform
cases, including cases seeking community integration for persons with mental illness
residing in nursing homes and adult homes. Bearden also served in 2009 as Chief
Health Counsel to New York State Senator Thomas K. Duane, Chair of the Senate
Health Committee. In that role, Bearden led Senate staff negotiations on the Family
Health Care Decisions Act, which allows family members or other surrogates to make
major medical decisions for incapacitated individuals who did not previously designate a
health care agent or provide instructions. Bearden graduated from Brown University and
Harvard Law School before clerking for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh
Circuit.

CATHLEEN B. CLARK, ESQ. is an Assistant United States Attorney in the Civil
Division of the United States Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of New York. Her
practice includes the investigation and litigation of civil rights complaints, including
complaints brought under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Prior to joining the U.S.
Attorney’s Office, Clark spent several years in private practice as a civil litigation
defense attorney both in Boston, Massachusetts and Albany, New York. Clark is a cum
laude graduate of Suffolk University Law School, where she was on Law Review, and a
summa cum laude graduate of St. Anselm College, where she obtained a Bachelor of
Science in Nursing.
TIMOTHY A. CLUNE, ESQ. is the Executive Director of Disability Rights New York
(“DRNY”). DRNY is the Protection & Advocacy and Client Assistance Program for
people with disabilities in New York. Since 1990, Clune’s practice has been devoted to
the representation of persons with disabilities. From 2007-2009 he served as Chief of
the New York State Attorney General’s Health Care Bureau. Clune has litigated several
disability rights cases of national importance, on such issues as the right to live in the
most integrated setting, the denial of life insurance because of mental illness,
architectural accessibility of stadium movie theaters, conspiracies to deprive persons
with disabilities of their civil rights and RICO violations by abusive adult home operators.
Clune is often called upon to provide training regarding the protection and advocation of
people with disabilities throughout the United States. He is a graduate of St. John’s
University and Albany Law School.

CURTIS L. DECKER, J.D. is Executive Director of the National Disability Rights
Network (“NDRN”). He has been affiliated with NDRN since its inception in 1982. As
Executive Director of the nation’s largest non-governmental enforcer of disability rights,
Decker oversees all activities related to training and technical assistance, membership
services and legislative advocacy. Before founding NDRN with other Protection and
Advocacy Directors, Decker served as Director of the Maryland Disability Law Center.
He also served for four years as Director of the H.E.L.P. Resource Project for Abused
and Neglected Children and was a VISTA Worker prior to working as a senior attorney
for the Baltimore Legal Aid Bureau for five years. Decker is the immediate past chair of
the Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities, a coalition of more than 100 national
disability groups, and serves on the boards of Friends of Research and Opera Vivente.
In his career, Decker also served as a legislative consultant for numerous groups,
including the American Association of Mental Retardation, the National Public Law
Training Center, and the Maryland Academy of Physician’s Assistants. He is a graduate
of Hamilton College and Cornell Law School.

KIRSTEN DUNN ’16 is a third-year law student at Albany Law School. She is currently
the co-executive for the Albany Law School Student Chapter of the National Academy
of Elder Law Attorneys and has been active in the Elder Law Pro Bono Project at
Albany Law School. Dunn participated with the elder law class in assessing the law
school for ADA compliance. She co-authored a study with Elise Friello ’15 on elder-law
related issues in rural areas of Upstate New York.

ELISE FRIELLO ’15 is a recent graduate of Albany Law School. While attending Albany
Law, she served as the Student Project Director for the Law School’s Elder Law Pro
Bono Project. Friello currently works at the New York State Dispute Resolution
Association, Inc. as the Lemon Law Arbitration Program Manager. She has strong
interests in public service and alternative dispute resolution.

PAUL R. KIETZMAN, ESQ. ’72 is Senior Counsel to NYSARC, Inc., the largest private
provider of supports and services to people with developmental disabilities in the nation.
For eight years prior to assuming that position, Kietzman was NYSARC’s General
Counsel. Previous to his tenure at NYSARC, Kietzman was the General Counsel to the
New York State Office for People with Developmental Disabilities (formerly OMRDD) for
twenty-seven years, having served as Assistant Counsel for three years for the New
York State Department of Social Services, where he kept the New York State Medicaid
State Plan. Kietzman is a 1967 graduate of Syracuse University and a 1972 cum laude
graduate of Albany Law School, where he was a member of Albany Law Review and
the Justinian Society. Between his undergraduate and law school years, Kietzman
served on a destroyer in the U.S. Navy in the Gulf of Tonkin.

KIRK M. LEWIS, ESQ. is Executive Director of Schenectady ARC, a private, not-for-
profit organization that provides residential services, employment support, day
programs, service coordination and other supports and services for individuals with
intellectual and other developmental disabilities. Before he received a law degree, Lewis
worked for Schenectady ARC in the Residential Department as a caseworker,
recreation aide, house manager and assistant director. Lewis left Schenectady ARC in
1982 to attend law school. After clerking for a Federal District Court Judge in Maine and
working in private practice in Albany, Lewis re-joined Schenectady ARC as General
Counsel in 1999, and was appointed Executive Director on July 1, 2011. He is a
graduate of Syracuse University College of Law and Cornell University.

HON. ROBERT LEVY is a United States Magistrate Judge in the Eastern District of
New York. Previously, he was general counsel to New York Lawyers for the Public
Interest and director of the Mental Health Law Project at the New York Civil Liberties
Union. He is an adjunct professor of law at Columbia Law School, New York University
School of Law, and Brooklyn Law School, where he teaches courses on mental
disability law. Co-author of The Rights of People with Mental Disabilities (1996), he has
lectured, written, and litigated widely in the areas of constitutional law, mental disability
rights, health law and international human rights. Judge Levy was lead counsel for
plaintiffs in the Willowbrook case, NYSARC v. Cuomo, 72 CV 356, 357 (EDNY). He has
conducted numerous fact-finding investigations in Eastern Europe and Northern Ireland
for Human Rights Watch and has worked closely with Mental Disability Rights
International to enforce the human rights of institutionalized people with mental
disabilities in Romania, Ukraine, and the Republic of Georgia. See, e.g., Hidden
Suffering: Romania’s Segregation and Abuse of Infants and Children with Disabilities,
Mental Disability Rights International (2006). He is a consultant in mediation for the
Federal Judicial Center and directs the alternative dispute resolution programs in the
Eastern District of New York.

ERICA MOLINA, ESQ. ’12 is the Director of the Client Assistance Program (“CAP”) at
Disability Rights New York (“DRNY”). CAP is a program that advocates statewide on
behalf of persons with disabilities seeking services toward successful employment.
Molina is originally from New Jersey, and graduated summa cum laude from New
Jersey City University in 2009. She attended Albany Law School from 2009 to
2012, during which time she worked as a legal intern at Disability Advocates, Inc. (now
DRNY), and also worked as an intern in partial practice through the school's then-
existing Civil Rights & Disabilities Law Clinic. Molina graduated from Albany Law in
2012 and received the Martin H. Belsky Public Interest Graduation Prize, awarded to
the graduate showing the greatest commitment to a career in public interest.

DEAN ALICIA OUELLETTE ’94 serves as Albany Law School’s President and Dean.
Dean Ouellette is also a Professor of Law at Albany Law School and a Professor of
Bioethics in the Union Graduate College/Mt. Sinai School of Medicine Program in
Bioethics. Prior to her appointment as President and Dean, she served as Associate
Dean for Academic Affairs and Intellectual Life. Dean Ouellette’s research focuses on
health law, disability rights, family law, children’s rights and human reproduction. Her
book, Bioethics and Disability: Toward a Disability Conscious Bioethics, was published
in 2011 by Cambridge University Press. She has authored numerous articles published
in academic journals such as the American Journal of Law and Medicine, the Hastings
Center Report, the American Journal of Bioethics, the Hastings Law Journal, the
Indiana Law Journal and Oregon Law Review. Before joining the law faculty, Dean
Ouellette served as an Assistant Solicitor General (“ASG”) in the Office of the New York
State Attorney General. As ASG, Prof. Ouellette briefed and argued more than 100
appeals on issues ranging from termination of treatment for the terminally ill to the
responsibility of gun manufacturers for injuries caused by handguns. Before that, Dean
Ouellette worked in private practice and served as a confidential law clerk to Judge
Howard A. Levine on the New York State Court of Appeals. She has continued her
advocacy work in select cases and was lead counsel on the law professors' brief
submitted in support of same-sex couples who sought the right to marry in New York
State. She received an A.B. from Hamilton College and a J.D. from Albany Law School,
where she was Editor-in-Chief of the Albany Law Review.

SCOTT P. QUESNEL, ESQ. ‘05 a graduate of Albany Law School, is a partner with the
Capital Region law firm of Girvin & Ferlazzo, P.C. His primary focus is on labor and
employment law. He routinely provides clients, both individuals a employers, with
representation in litigation, negotiations and in providing day-to-day guidance on a host
of complicated labor and employment law issues. Quesnel regularly represents
employers and employees in matters involving claims of disability discrimination before
administrative agencies, including the New York State Division of Human Rights and the
United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. He is also certified as a
Senior Professional in Human Resources (“SPHR”) through the HR Certification
Institute as well as the Society for Human Resource Management. The SPHR
certification is recognized as a credential for those who have mastered the strategic and
policy-making aspects of HR management in the United States. As an attorney and
human resource professional, Quesnel assists a number of large and small employers
each day as they endeavor to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

JOHN ROBINSON is Managing Partner and CEO of Our Ability, Inc., a company owned
and operation by people with disabilities to support people with disabilities. Our Ability,
Inc. is a U.S. Business Leadership Network -Disability Owned Business Enterprise
specializing in diversity inclusion messaging, disability etiquette and video production.
Robinson also serves as a motivational and inspirational speaker. In the past six years,
he has traveled from Italy to Australia discussing the obstacles he has overcome in life,
business and sales. Robinson is the subject of a national public television documentary,
“Get Off Your Knees: The John Robinson Story.” His autobiography, “Get Off Your
Knees: A Story of Faith, Courage, and Determination,” was published by Syracuse
University Press. Robinson has been married for more than twenty-two years and has
three children. In 2014, he was named a White House Disability Employment Champion
of Change. In 2001, he was selected to carry the Olympic torch as it passed through
Albany, New York on its way to Salt Lake City for the 2002 games.
SHEILA ELLEN SHEA, ESQ. ’86, is the Director of the Mental Hygiene Legal Service,
Third Judicial Department, an agency of the Appellate Division of the State Supreme
Court, which provides legal service and assistance to persons in mental hygiene
facilities or those alleged to be in need of care and treatment in such facilities. Shea
was appointed to the Service in 1987 and has served as its director since 2007. She is
a 1981 graduate of the University of Vermont and a 1986 graduate of Albany Law
School. Shea is a member of the New York State Bar Association (“NYSBA”) Elder Law
Section and serves on the Committee on Issues Affecting People with Disabilities. She
edits the chapters on “Rights in Facilities” and “Individual Rights and Discrimination: The
Deaf and Hard of Hearing” for the NYSBA publication, Representing People with
Disabilities. Shea is also the author of “The Mental Hygiene Legal Service at 50; A
Retrospective and Prospective Examination of Advocacy for People with Disabilities”
published by the NYSBA Government, Law and Policy Journal (Winter 2012) and
“Representing Clients with Mental Disabilities” published by the New York State
Defender’s Association Public Defense Backup Center Report (January-April 2013).
Shea is the recipient of the 2013 Hodgson/Jacobs Law Award presented by NYSARC
Inc. for demonstrating outstanding commitment and dedication to improving the lives of
people who have intellectual and other developmental disabilities and the 2014 Cerebral
Palsy Associations of New York Public Service Award.
BENJAMIN THAPA, ESQ. ’11 a graduate of Albany Law School, is a technical writer at
South Col Engineering, P.C., in Latham, NY. Thapa and his family moved to the United
States in 1986 after he was diagnosed with a severe hearing impairment. In the U.S.
Thapa and his family took advantage of the services, training, and technology available
through the ADA and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act framework. Thapa
now lives in Troy, is active in the Capital District Nepali community, and enjoys
traveling, reading and Brazilian Jitsu as hobbies.
ERIC E. WILKE, ESQ. ‘05 is a Senior Associate Counsel at CSEA, Inc., Local 1000,
AFSCME, AFL-CIO, where he practices before state and federal courts, arbitrates
contract grievances and represents individuals at disciplinary proceedings pursuant to
various collective bargaining agreements and statutory procedures. Wilke also advises
field staff and CSEA officers regarding the merits of labor and employments issues.
Previously, Wilke worked as an associate attorney at Wilson, Elser, Moskowitz,
Edelman & Dicker from 2005-2007, handling civil defense litigation. He began working
for CSEA, Inc. in 2007, and was promoted to his current position in 2013. Wilke is active
in the New York State Bar Association, is an executive committee member of the Labor
and Employment law Section and a co-chair of the Labor and Employment Technology