In 1990, Congress passed the Americans with Disabilities Act, arguably the nation’s most sweeping civil-rights law since the mid-’60s. President George Bush said the legislation would allow handicapped people who wanted jobs “to move proudly into the economic mainstream.” But four years later, even as National Disability Employment Awareness Month comes to a close, the reality of ADA has turned out to be quite different. While aiding some handicapped people in their quest to enter the work force, the law serves mainly to help injured or impaired workers like Murray keep their jobs-an outcome that has unnerved disabled activists and businesses alike. Says Christina Harris, a vice president with the personnel firm Vincam Human Resources Inc.: the ADA “primarily protects employees who complain of bad backs and stress.”

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the agency that investigates ADA cases, has received almost 35,000 ADA complaints since 1992. Yet today, as when the law was passed, two thirds of all severely disabled adults remain unemployed. And a full 85 percent of the discrimination claims under review have been brought by people already in the workplace. Half allege that they have been wrongfully discharged. The most commonly cited disabilities are back pain and ailments like carpal tunnel syndrome and depression, which together account for 40 percent of the cases. By contrast, the blind and the deaf have filed only 6 percent of all the actions to date.

People with traditional disabilities aren’t exploiting the law as expected, partly because many fear losing comprehensive medical benefits from programs like Medicaid. “Most of us are scared to death to get a job and lose out on poverty-based healthcare,” says Justin Dart, former chairman of the President’s Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities, Meanwhile the ADA has armed less severely disabled workers with a legal blunderbuss. The bill’s requirements are broad and vague–employers, for instance, must make “reasonable accommodation” for “impairments” that include everything from drug addiction to obesity. Michelin Tire Corp. was recently sued by Darren Howell, an employee who was diagnosed with a hip condition that prevented him from squatting, twisting or standing for long periods. For 13 weeks Howell was placed in a less physical, but temporary, job testing product quality. But Michelin said it had no permanent position that Howell could fill with his physical constraints (an assessment that Howell contested). Michelin won the case, but it fears similar lawsuits.

Michelin and other employers whose businesses require strenuous labor worry that they may be forced into an untenable position. Complaints like Howell’s against Michelin or Jane Murray’s against Orlando’s Florida Hospital come from people in real pain. But businesses say they can’t afford to battle lawsuits for job modification from everyone who is now potentially eligible. Florida Hospital, for instance, doesn’t deny that Murray is hurt. But its lawyers say that reducing the demands of her job would create an unfair burden on her small group of colleagues and it would also set a precedent that the hospital could ill afford to repeat.

The disabled community is divided over what to do next. Many activists vigorously defend the law, which has forced public buildings and businesses to install wheel-chair ramps and Braille signs. But others are outraged at abuses and fear a backlash by business that will hurt the people the law was intended to help, Says Michael Auberger, co-founder and national organizer of ADAPT, a Denver-based disability-rights group: “It’s going to have to change. Otherwise, there’s going to be wholesale slaughter of the law.” Already, Russell Redenbaugh of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is calling for hearings to examine whether ADA’s scope needs to be narrowed. Auberger, for one, would like to see recovering alcoholics, drug abusers and some people with back pain excluded from the ranks of the disabled. But the newly handicapped are likely to guard their new rights jealously. For now it is the hobbled and the sore who have won the day.