July is Disability Pride Month, and this year we who are disabled have something to be proud of. On June 25, the House, with broad bipartisan support (402-17), passed a vital civil rights bill: the ADA Amendments Act. The bill would overturn several Supreme Court decisions that have hurt the disabled.

The bill, which is expected to come before the Senate soon, would make it easier for people with disabilities to prove employment discrimination. It would restore the legal protections established when Congress passed and the first President Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

The passage of the ADA on July 26, 1990, was a historic event for people like myself. Like millions of Americans, I’d encountered disability-related prejudice. Now, for the first time, people with disabilities would have legal redress if they encountered discrimination.

But, contrary to what Congress intended, the Supreme Court has eroded the force of the ADA. Through decisions such as Sutton v. United Airlines and Toyota v. Williams, the Supreme Court has made it difficult for disabled Americans —and there are 51 million of us, according to the Census Bureau — to obtain protection from the ADA.

The court has set an overly demanding standard for qualifying as disabled. And the court has ruled that people with disabilities such as diabetes, cancer, multiple sclerosis and epilepsy, who function well with “mitigating measures,” such as medications or hearing aids, are not protected by the ADA, even if they encounter disability-based discrimination

These callous decisions cannot stand.

Fortunately, the proposed bill would put the teeth back into civil rights protections for people like me. It would ensure that disability would be “construed broadly” and “cover more physical and mental impairments” under the ADA. The bill also says that courts shouldn’t consider “mitigating measures” when determining if someone is disabled and that “an impairment that is episodic or in remission is a disability if it would substantially limit a major life activity when active.”

The disability and business communities support the bill. “This is a good change for America, and we urge Congress to pass this legislation,” said U.S. Chamber of Congress President and CEO Tom Donohue. “People … with chronic disabilities need to manage their disease and not be discriminated against for it,” said American Diabetes Association CEO Larry Hausner.

People with disabilities don’t want special rights. We want equal rights. And we want to be given a chance to work if we can do the job.

That should not be too much to ask.

Kathi Wolfe is a writer and poet in Falls Church, Va. She is the author of “Helen Takes the Stage: The Helen Keller Poems,” published by Pudding House Press. She can be reached at pmproj [at] progressive [dot] org.