National Association of the Deaf

During the summer of 2008, the NAD hosted Harvard law student, Caitlin Vogus, as an intern in the Law and Advocacy Center. Caitlin, a graduate of the University of Virginia (U.Va.), wrote about her experience at the NAD Law and Advocacy Center in an article for the A&S Online magazine.

The NAD Law and Advocacy Center invites law students interested in pursuing a challenging and rewarding experience in civil rights and disability discrimination law to contact us about internship opportunities.

Caitlin writes:

Listening to Her Calling: American Sign Language Program helped aspiring lawyer Caitlin Vogus find her true passion.

In my first day of American Sign Language (ASL) class at U.Va., the professor walked in, made a few announcements, and then told the class that those would be the last words we heard him speak. From that moment on, students were thrown into a world of total immersion in ASL and deaf culture in the classroom. Little did I know from that first day of class what a deep impact the experience would have on my academic and professional interests.

From a young age, I had always wanted to practice law. As a result, I was thrilled to be admitted to Harvard Law School after graduation from U.Va. However, I worried about losing the ASL skills I had developed in college and how I would apply my interest in deaf studies to my legal career. These worries were relieved when, after my first year of law school, I was accepted for an internship at the National Association of the Deaf (NAD) Law and Advocacy Center.

The NAD is an advocacy organization established in 1880 to promote the lives and rights of deaf people, including the use of ASL. To further these goals, the NAD Law and Advocacy Center provides legal support for deaf rights through litigation and lobbying on behalf of deaf people.

As a summer intern with the NAD Law and Advocacy Center, I was immediately assigned to exciting and challenging work. Under the supervision of two attorneys, my main work at the beginning of the summer was answering inquiries from people who had contacted NAD for legal help. Because NAD has limited resources, it cannot take every case that is brought to it. As part of my internship, I sorted the inquiries to determine if any were suitable for lawsuits that could impact the development of the law in a way favorable to deaf rights.

However, even in situations in which NAD could not devote its limited resources to bringing a lawsuit, I would still respond to the inquiry to inform the person of the status of the law and suggest other methods for resolving the conflict. In my first week, I handled a range of issues in areas such as housing, employment, public accommodations and government. Each area required unique research under a wide variety of statutes, such as the Americans with Disabilities Act, Rehabilitation Act, Fair Housing Act or Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

In addition, I also worked on legal writing assignments related to cases the Law and Advocacy Center was actively pursuing. One such case involved a discrimination claim by a deaf attorney against the courts of her state for refusing to provide her with ASL interpreting services, effectively preventing her from working as a litigation attorney. In that case, the state filed a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim; I was in charge of drafting our motion in response. Because deaf attorneys are often the main advocates for the legal rights of deaf people in their area or state, I was excited to work on a case to restore a deaf attorney’s ability to practice law.

As I researched various statutes concerning disability discrimination, I found that my academic work in disability studies at U.Va. helped me understand the underlying framework of the law. In most types of discrimination, including discrimination on the basis of race, the legal framework mandates strict equal treatment. However, in cases of disability discrimination, the law often requires different treatment for persons with disabilities through accommodations. For example, if a deaf person who communicates using ASL goes to a hospital, the hospital would be discriminating against her by treating her the same as a hearing person. If the hospital insists on only using verbal communication, the deaf person may not be able to understand her treatment. Instead, accommodations such as the use of a sign language interpreter or communication in writing are necessary to put the deaf person in the same place as a hearing person would be. Strictly equal treatment in this case does not lead to an equal outcome.

This framework made sense to me because of classes I had taken at U.Va. that explored social construction of disability. Under this view, harms created by a disability are actually harms imposed by society. If we lived in a world where everyone was deaf, society would be constructed for the convenience of deaf people. Because we live in a hearing world, our legal system must accommodate deaf people to remove barriers to their participation in society that society itself has constructed. This academic understanding clarified the backdrop against which my legal work took place.

In addition to the legal skills I gained through working at NAD, my work exposed me to greater knowledge of deaf culture and ASL. The most exciting experience was attending the 2008 NAD Conference in New Orleans. For a full week in July, the convention took over the New Orleans Marriott, transforming it into a deaf world. Signers were everywhere; even the Starbucks in the lobby put out pens and paper to make coffee-ordering run more smoothly. I attended workshops on a huge variety of topics related to deafness, from the history of deaf activism in America to media representations of deafness to the genetics of deafness. ASL performances, such as an ASL storytelling competition, took place in the evening.

While my internship at the NAD Law and Advocacy Center allowed me to continue to explore my passion for ASL and deaf studies, it also provided a firsthand demonstration of the struggles that people with disabilities still face in gaining their full civil rights under the law. My experiences at U.Va. first exposed me to the disability rights and Deaf Pride movements. My work experience showed me that those movements, and the help of attorneys working to enforce anti-discrimination laws, are still necessary to the fulfillment of civil and human rights for people with disabilities across America.