An editorial urging ratification in the Washington Post takes much the same line, claiming the measure “would not require the United States to change its laws” and blaming opposition on the “far right.” Sure, let’s sign away our national sovereignty on questions of how best to accommodate the disabled. What could go wrong?
Plenty, actually. Anyone who claims the CRPD merely codifies existing U.S. disabled-rights law, as distinct from prescribing major new extensions of it, cannot have read its text with care. Beyond that, the treaty would if taken seriously bid to wrest from the control of elected U.S. lawmakers the future course of many important domestic policy issues, from the structuring of Social Security disability benefits to the question of whether prospective law and medical students should have a right to extra time in taking exams to accommodate their learning disabilities. When it’s pointed out that the convention by its own text requires radical revamping of many existing policies, advocates respond with the peculiar argument that, after all, we shouldn’t take its provisions all that seriously; other ratifying countries are already blithely ignoring their obligations under it, and the United States will be free to do so too, especially as the mechanisms for enforcing it are (for the moment) fairly toothless. It is at best a cynical argument that deserves senators’ rejection.
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Will states and localities have to change their laws, or just the federal government? Glad you asked: Article 4, Section 5 says “The provisions of the present Convention shall extend to all parts of federal states without any limitations or exceptions.”
