movie theater. The management told me that I would have had to overcome significant barriers at the fire exit in case of fire.

In 1982, I was forced to stay in my van for days at a time as I attempted to tour the west coast, without leaving because I couldn't find accessible bathrooms, restaurants, hotels, retailers and other businesses, both large and small. In 1983, I had to transfer to a new law school because I was unable to climb aboard a municipal bus to get to and from school and no comparable accessible services existed in the community in which I was attending school. In 1985, I had to sit by myself on stage at my law school graduation, instead of with my classmates in the gallery and the auditorium in which the graduation was being held because I couldn't climb the stairs to receive my degree. In 1986, I was thrown out of a shopping mall because a security officer believed that my electric wheelchair was a safety hazard to other patrons.

That same year, I was told by a clerk in a shoe store that I would have to take my developmentally disabled friend to another store to buy shoes because she might scare other customers away. In 1988, I was forced to invent a set of bathroom grab bars out of wooden chairs in an inaccessible hotel room that I had to occupy for a week while I was traveling on business.

As recently as August of this year, I was excluded from a significant portion of the annual meeting of the American Bar Association, even after I had traveled all the way to Honolulu, because the facilities in which the meeting's functions and events were being held were largely inaccessible.

Thus, a lack of access of public accommodations not only deprives me of social and recreational and commercial opportunities, but it has a very real and a very negative impact on my ability to be employed; to be able to function as a practicing attorney in the real world; both when I'm required to travel on client-related business and when I attempt to participate in activities of the organized bar, such as continuing legal education programs and local, State, and national bar association meetings, functions and events. If the employment provisions of the ADA are to have any real meaning, the public accommodations provisions must be seen both as 'free-standing provisions designed to eliminate isolation and segregation among all of America's disabled citizenry, as well as provisions necessary to open and maintain meaningful employment and corollary associational opportunities for persons with disabilities. While I, along with most good Republicans, view any effort to regulate business with an extremely jaundiced eye, I can safely say that my reasoned analysis of the Senate compromise ADA allows me to conclude that this bill is essential, timely and absolutely reasonable.

Aside from the human dignity and productivity benefits that will obtain from the ADA, there will also be a direct financial benefit to the Federal Government and to employers. In my case, when I was finally able to obtain permanent employment, I no longer had to collect my monthly Social Security disability payment, Medicare benefits or vocational rehabilitation funding.

Instead, I became a productive, taxpaying citizen and consumer, able to support the domestic and medical and other bills I incurred, through salary and benefits obtained on my job. Even though the

Federal benefits I was receiving before I became employed, were pretty minuscule compared to those received by most persons with severe disabilities, only 4 years after going to work, I now estimate that the net, direct and positive financial impact on the Federal Government due to my employment alone is approximately $40,000 to $50,000 per year.

In addition to these measurable benefits, the ADA can be seen as sort of, as it's been called, an emancipation proclamation for Americans with disabilities. The ADA would make possible for persons with disabilities, what we have always wanted to believe about America—that the truest measure of a person is the content of that person's character and not the presence of a disability.

Mr. EDWARDS. Thank you very much, Ms. Cooper. I'm sure I'm speaking for all the members of the subcommittee and the staff when I tell you what huge respect we have for you and how moving your testimony was.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Cooper follows:]

Prepared Statement of Laura D. Cooper, Attorney, Pettit & Martin, SAN FRANCISCO, CA

My name is Laura D. Cooper. I am an attorney with Pettit & Martin, a major international law firm based in San Francisco, California. I am also the current Chair of the Disabled Lawyers Committee of the American Bar Association/Young Lawyers Division, the former California State Chair of the Dole Disability Coalition, and a former National Co-Chair of the Bush/Quayle 1988 Disability Coalition. Recently, I was named as one of twenty outstanding young American lawyers for 1989 by the American Bar Association/Young Lawyers Division and its Barrister publication

editorial board.

While these credentials may at first blush create the appearance of a career path unmarred by discrimination, that is not in fact the case. Just four years ago åfter graduating near the top of my law school class with law review experience, a regional moot court award, an externship experience at a federal Circuit Court of Appeals, and a summer clerking experience with the west coast's leading intellectual property law firm. I found it nearly impossible to land a job. When I went to on-campus interviews at my law school, interviewers typically cut the interview short and concentrated on my disability instead of my resume by asking questions such as how fast my wheelchair could go. When I sent resumes directly to law firms as an alternative to the campus interview process. I discovered that when I did not indicate on my resume that I was disabled. I almost invariably received an interview request from the firm to which the resume was sent. In those cases, however, I generally arrived for a

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scheduled interview and discovered that the interview location was inaccessible. Even where I was able to attend an interview, the interviewer usually still did not know how to deal with the fact that I was disabled. or I was often simply kept waiting until the interview was cancelled altogether even though I usually had travelled hundreds or thousands of miles at my own expense to attend the interview.

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So then I tried another tactic. I began inserting a benign indication on my resume that I was interested in disabilityrelated issues, and also added a neutral signal in my cover letter indicating that I had a disability. Subsequently. I only rarely received any interview requests.

I

My experiences clearly showed a pattern of discrimination. Following one interview during my last year of law school I received an offer to work as a permanent law clerk for a firm in Portland, Oregon for a salary of $6/hour. When I turned that job down, the firm instead hired a full-time associate attorney. also vividly recall classmates receiving interviews and job offers from firms that previously had told me they were not hiring, and classmates who had neither performed as well as I had in law school nor had comparable law school experiences or achievements getting job offers at firms that would not even interview me. I can recall representatives from firms who told me, among other things, that they would not hire me because of what I would do to their insurance rates, that they were afraid of how their clients would react to me, that they did not want to

give me work I could not handle, that they were not sure I knew what litigation was all about because if I did I would not assume that I was capable of doing it, that I somehow just was not "right" for their firm culture, or that they doubted that I could handle the stress of a law firm practice.

Nevertheless. despite these horrific experiences. I am one

of the lucky ones. I persisted, and after over 400 rejections from legal employers. I finally found a firm that was willing to look at my qualifications instead of my disability. I am now busy in the litigation department of Pettit & Martin in San Francisco. practicing in the field of accountant liability.

I look back now to the unbelievable experiences I had in trying to find professional employment and am astonished at what has transpired over the last four years. I went from nobody's choice in 1985, to a federal appellate clerkship with the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans in 1986, to a Pettit & Martin litigation position in 1987, to an interview for a position with C. Boyden Gray as Associate Counsel to the President in 1988, to being selected as one of the twenty outstanding young American lawyers in 1989. It is difficult to understand how only two years.

into a career as a private practitioner I could be so highly regarded by my peers when only four years ago I was not valued in any demonstrable way by any firm to which I had applied for

employment.'

'I have since discovered through my contacts with other attorneys with disabilities as Chair of the Disabled Lawyers Committee of the ABA/YLD that my experiences were all too typical