The ADA Amendments Act Regulations: Understanding the EEOC Regulations. The Honorable Chai R. Feldblum and the Honorable Victoria A. Lipnic, U.S. Equal Opportunity Employment Commission (2011)

This PowerPoint presentation from the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission (EEOC) thoroughly explains the Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act (ADAAA) Regulations, which were published in March 2011. The overall goal of the ADAAA and implementing regulations is to encourage less litigation over whether something is a covered disability, and redirect court inquiry onto whether the plaintiff was discriminated against.
This presentation is useful to anyone seeking to understand the ADAAA and regulations. It does a particularly good job of walking a reader through the prongs of ADA analysis, the rules of construction for the act, and in explaining how they should be understood. For lawyers handling HIV discrimination cases, the ADAAA is expected to substantially ease the difficulty of arguing that HIV is a disability. Commissioners Feldblum and Lipnic emphasize that the regulations state that "[I]t should easily be concluded that the following types of impairments will, at a minimum, substantially limit the major life activities indicated" and include HIV, as it substantially limits the functions of the immune system.