Who the ADA Protects

The ADA protects people who meet any one of three definitions of disability:

1. Actual disability: You have a physical or mental condition that substantially limits one or more major life activities. This is the most straightforward — you currently have a disability that affects your daily life.
2. Record of a disability: You have a history of a disability, even if you no longer have it. For example, someone who had cancer that is now in remission, or a person with a past psychiatric hospitalization.
3. Regarded as having a disability: Someone treats you as if you have a disability, whether you actually do or not. For example, if an employer fires you because they mistakenly believe you have HIV, you're protected even if you don't.

Major life activities are the basic things people do every day. The ADA provides a broad (but not exhaustive) list:

• Seeing, hearing, speaking
• Walking, standing, lifting, bending
• Eating, sleeping, breathing
• Learning, reading, concentrating, thinking
• Caring for yourself, working, communicating

The law also includes major bodily functions — things like immune system function, normal cell growth, digestion, bladder and bowel function, brain and neurological function, and circulation. This means conditions like diabetes, epilepsy, HIV, Crohn's disease, and many others clearly qualify.

Before 2008, courts sometimes set a very high bar for "substantially limits" — requiring people to prove their disability was severe and permanent. The ADA Amendments Act (ADAAA) of 2008changed that.

Now, the standard is much lower and broader:

• The term must be interpreted in favor of broad coverage
• You don't need scientific or medical evidence to prove you're limited compared to "most people"
• A condition doesn't have to be severe — it just needs to be more than minor
• The focus should be on whether discrimination occurred, not on whether the person's condition qualifies

Many disabilities are not constant — they come and go. The ADAAA made clear that episodic conditions and conditions in remission are still disabilities under the ADA if they would substantially limit a major life activity when active.

Examples:

• Epilepsy: A person may go weeks or months without a seizure, but is still protected because seizures substantially limit neurological function when they occur.
• Cancer in remission: Even if treatment was successful, a history of cancer that affected major bodily functions qualifies.
• Major depression: Episodic by nature — periods of significant impairment qualify even between episodes.
• Multiple sclerosis: Symptoms may flare and recede, but the condition is always protected.

The "regarded as" prong is powerful. It protects you even when you don't actually have a disability — as long as someone discriminated against you because they thought you did.

Examples:

• A restaurant refuses to seat you because the staff thinks your facial scarring is "disturbing to other customers"
• An employer fires you after learning you take medication, assuming you must have a serious mental health condition
• A gym refuses a membership to someone because they walk with a limp, assuming they'd be a "safety risk"

The only exception: if the impairment is both transitory (lasting 6 months or less) and minor, the "regarded as" prong does not apply. A broken arm, for example, would not qualify under this prong.