ABSTRACT
Catastrophic injury/illness does not necessarily equal disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). After more than 10 years of enforcement and litigation, the courts are still struggling with the problem of proving whether an individual has a covered disability under ADA, and therefore is protected against discrimination. In fact, in the words of a judge at the First Circuit Court of Appeals in a recent decision, the word
disability
is considered to be a “term of art” (Heyburn, 2002). This clearly demonstrates the difficulty and subjectivity that has developed in defining disability under ADA.
