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U.S. Treasury Loses Fight over Accessible CurrencyBy Penny Reeder A District Court of Appeals judge’s ruling is cause for celebration among people all over the country who are blind and visually impaired. 
On September 4th , the United States Treasury and the Bush administration were handed a stunning defeat when District of Columbia Circuit Judge James Robertson ruled against them over the accessibility of currency. This means that the next generation of paper currency must include a feature that would help blind people identify the denomination of the paper currency. The decision means that when the next generation of $5, $10, $20 and $50 bills is printed, there must be some way for blind people to tell them apart, the federal judge ordered. Robertson ruled that he would not allow the Treasury Department to go at its own pace as it complies with a May ruling that U.S. paper money discriminates against the blind. Treasury officials had hired a contractor to investigate ways to help the blind differentiate between bills, perhaps by printing different sizes or including raised numbers. Government attorneys urged the judge to let that process play out and not interfere with anti-counterfeiting redesigns that are already in process. Robertson, though, was not persuaded. “The Treasury Department is not going to just conduct this on its own schedule and its own terms. Let that be clear,” he said. Robertson ordered attorneys for the government to meet with the American Council of the Blind (ACB), which brought the lawsuit, and come up with a schedule that requires changes in the next generation of bills. 
The next $100 design could be printed as early as autumn, and Robertson said those bills won’t be affected. But subsequent designs should solve the problem, he said. On May 20th, a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit agreed with Robertson’s 2006 ruling that requires the Department of the Treasury to make paper currency accessible to people who are blind and visually impaired. The decision was a response to the Bush administration’s appeal of the 2006 ruling in a lawsuit brought by several blind plaintiffs on behalf of the ACB. The Bush administration had 90 days from the May 20th ruling to ask the panel to reconsider its decision or seek a review by the Supreme Court. Robertson’s ruling addressed the administration’s request to proceed at its own pace. The case was begun to honor the memory of a deceased loved one. In 2006, attorney Jeffrey A. Lovitky approached the ACB and offered to bring suit after losing his girlfriend to a house fire. Lovitky noted that he had to help his girlfriend, who was blind, identify paper currency that she could not distinguish. He also noted the needless indignity she had to go through to do something that most people take for granted. U.S. currency, he said, is essentially discriminatory against people who are blind. In the 2006 ruling, Robertson agreed with Lovitky and the ACB that lack of accommodation to the needs of people with visual disabilities is a violation of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. The judge ordered the Treasury Department to begin identifying ways to make paper currency discernable by people who cannot rely on vision to distinguish one paper bill from another. The Treasury Department appealed. In May, the Court of Appeals panel, in a 2-to-1 ruling, agreed with the ACB that it is ludicrous for the Treasury Department to claim it is an undue burden to modify paper currency to make it accessible when a majority of nations in the world have already made modifications to their own currencies to make bills discernable by all their citizens. According to the ACB, the May 20th ruling by the Court of Appeals validates the non-discrimination principle of the Rehabilitation Act. “This is an important decision, for a number of reasons,” said Melanie Brunson, executive director of the American Council of the Blind. “First, it will enhance independence and increase opportunities for people who are blind. “The truth of the matter is that, while we have adapted to not having full access to our paper money (by asking others to identify it, or relying on expensive technologies to read it, and then folding up our bills in various ways so as to be able to identify them later), there are a lot of cases where those adaptations create undignified, not to mention inconvenient, situations for us. This decision will go a long way toward creating greater acceptance for people who are blind and greater ability for us to function as self-respecting and capable people.” The Appeals Court panel had referred the case back to Judge Robertson’s lower court with instructions to begin determining the best way (by size, shape or tactile characteristics) to accomplish the goal of eliminating the discriminatory character of current U.S. paper currency. (Portions of this article appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle.) Penny Reeder became blind as a result of retinopathy of prematurity. She lives with her husband and their six children in Montgomery Village, Md. |
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