Gosh, why are people with disabilities so much less likely to be employed than people without disabilities (34 percent to 74 percent in 2013)? One reason is what researchers from Rutgers and Syracuse universities discovered when they sent out resumes for fake job applicants who either had a spinal cord injury, Asperger’s syndrome, or did not mention a disability: applicants who mentioned a disability heard back from employers 26 percent less often than applicants who didn’t mention a disability, and it was actually worse for more experienced applicants.

You know how Republicans are always railing against laws that would prohibit employers from discriminating and the like? Maybe that’s because such laws work:

The study showed that the Americans With Disabilities Act, the 1990 federal law banning discrimination against those with disabilities, appeared to reduce bias. The lack of interest in disabled workers — and especially in the rate at which they were called back for an interview — was most pronounced in workplaces with fewer than 15 employees, the study found. Businesses that small are not covered by the federal law. At publicly traded companies, which may be more concerned about their reputations and more sensitive to charges of discrimination, evidence of discrimination on the basis of disability seemed largely to disappear. The same was true at firms that receive federal contracts, which are required by the government to make a special effort to hire disabled workers.

This is why we need stronger laws and more enforcement, not Republicans blocking progress because hey, we already have laws that kinda sorta cover that.

This blog was originally posted on Daily Kos on November 7, 2015. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: Laura Clawson has been a Daily Kos contributing editor since December 2006  and Labor editor since 2011.