Joe Shlabotnik (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Right before Christmas last year, when Joe Biden still lived in the White House, the U.S Department of Transportation (DOT) published in the Federal Register a final rule to ensure air travel accommodations for travelers using wheelchairs. Now, the Trump Administration is refusing to enforce it.
The rule strengthened the DOT’s regulation implementing the Air Carrier Access Act, a federal law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability in air travel. The DOT estimates that about 5.5 million Americans use wheelchairs and one out of every 100 wheelchairs or scooters on domestic flights is damaged, delayed, or lost. “Damaged and delayed personal wheelchairs and assistive devices and untimely and unsafe assistance provided by airlines can lead to serious life disruptions such as loss of mobility independence, personal injury, lost opportunities and wages, and other significant harms,” the rule states. “Some wheelchair users even avoid flying altogether because of these risks.”
Among other things, the rule requires annual training for airline staff and contractors who help people with disabilities or who handle wheelchairs, noting that assistance must be provided promptly and in a manner that is “safe and dignified.” It also clarifies what carriers must do to compensate and accommodate disabled people whose mobility devices are broken, lost, or delayed in flight.
The rule was supposed to go into effect on January 16. But the squatter currently occupying the White House moved back in on January 20, and his administration has so far flat-out refused to enforce the rule. The Trump Administration, which refers to the regulation as the “Wheelchair Rule,” announced in February that it would be delaying enforcement for a month “to review the final rule to ensure that it is consistent with the law and administration policies.” Shortly after that, American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, JetBlue, Southwest Airlines, United Airlines, and their trade association, Airlines for America, filed a federal lawsuit seeking to shoot down the rule on the basis that the DOT did not have the legal authority to issue it.
In June, the agency stated in a notice that it would continue to not enforce the rule before August 1 to “allow additional time for the officials appointed or designated by the president to review the Wheelchair Rule to ensure that it is consistent with the law, including the requirements of the 2024 FAA Act, and administration policies, and to consider the issues raised by a lawsuit filed recently to challenge certain provisions of the Wheelchair Rule.”
Isn’t it funny how the administration of the squatter all of the sudden feels the need to pause and review its policies to make sure that they are consistent with the law? And isn’t it funny to hear that they care at all what anybody who has filed a lawsuit challenging any of their policies has to say?
For the squatter, this is all about exacting petty revenge by undoing everything that the Biden Administration did, no matter how many people the action may have benefitted. It also is yet more evidence that the squatter and his bunch don’t give the slightest bit of a damn about the safety and dignity of people with disabilities.