Advocate for the disabled looks toward US post
GROTON -- As an engineer inspecting medical devices for the US Food and Drug Administration, Christine M. Griffin, a paraplegic, could enter many buildings only by maneuvering her wheelchair up loading dock ramps. She bristled at the injustice, but not because she felt personally wronged. It was, she recalled, because it was wrong in general.
That experience inspired a distinguished career as an advocate for disabled people, a career Griffin says has very little to do with her own handicap. Now the executive director of the Disability Law Center in Boston is returning to the federal government with a similar mission: to make disabilities largely irrelevant in the workplace.
''When things didn't seem fair, I said so," Griffin said. ''I think I would have done that whether I was in a wheelchair or not, and I've kept trying to do that ever since."
Griffin, 50, a groundbreaking civil rights defender for people with disabilities, recently won Senate confirmation as one of five commissioners on the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the federal agency that oversees the nation's laws against discrimination in the workplace.
She will be leaving her Massachusetts position later this month and will be sworn in as a commissioner in early January. Griffin, who worked previously at the agency as a special assistant to the vice chairman, fills a Democratic vacancy on the bipartisan panel; her term runs until July 2009.
In an interview yesterday at her Groton home, Griffin said the new job is a natural, if uncharted, culmination of her life's work, a path she believes she might have chosen even if a car accident hadn't left her partially paralyzed at age 25.
Griffin, a Dorchester native, points to a determined, somewhat rebellious streak cultivated early in life. After a stint in the Army as a medical technician, she enrolled in the Massachusetts Maritime Academy, the Buzzards Bay training school, as a member of the second freshman class that included women.
After the car accident in 1980, she was granted a physical waiver so she could finish her studies, and graduated in 1983 to a standing ovation from her classmates.
Her engineering degree led her to the FDA, where she worked for seven years. Her work there interested her in the law, and she entered Boston College Law School in 1990. After graduating, Griffin returned to her alma mater as interim head of the academy, becoming the first woman president in the school's 102 years.
Griffin said serving on the federal commission will provide an opportunity to help combat employment discrimination, particularly for disabled individuals who are persistently underemployed, she said. Some 70 percent of people with disabilities, including those with mental health problems, are unemployed, she said.
''It's the linchpin to improving the lives of people with disabilities and it's the one place we haven't seen the progress that we had hoped," she said.
She is also looking forward to taking on the broader challenge of reducing employment discrimination of all kinds. Created in 1964, the commission is an independent federal agency that enforces laws banning workplace bias based on race, color, gender, religion, national origin, and disability.
Griffin drew support from Democratic senators Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Harry Reid of Nevada, the Senate minority leader, for her nomination. Disabled rights advocates also praised Griffin as a tireless advocate, skilled coalition-builder, and savvy legal mind who helped expand the law center's clout and visibility and strengthen ties with the disabled community.
''I think sometimes public interest lawyers put up a wall between them and their clients," said Andrew Imparato, president of the American Association of People with Disabilities, a 120,000-member group that lobbied for Griffin's appointment. ''She knocked them down, partly through her disability and partly through her personality."
Imparato worked with Griffin during her previous stint at the EEOC from 1995-1996.
Stan Eichner, the law center's litigation director, called Griffin a ''dynamic leader" who helped forge valuable ties with state leaders in areas that affect the disabled community, such as mental health and human services.
''Our clients are closely tied to the state, and she was on a first-name basis with all the commissioners," he said. Those connections were crucial in working to move disabled residents from hospitals and mental institutions into community settings, he said.
When Griffin was in law school, the landmark 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act was passed, and she has since fought vigorously to uphold it. In 1994, the center filed a class action suit against the MBTA on behalf of disabled riders, forcing the authority to comply with safety and accessibility requirements. In 2000, she testified before Congress against a proposal to make disabled individuals wait 90 days before filing a complaint under the law.
''Why should a person who has mental retardation wait 90 days to invoke a court's jurisdiction after being told by a restaurant owner that he won't serve him because he doesn't think the other customers want to look at him? Why should a man with cerebral palsy have to wait 90 days after being refused service at a liquor store and escorted out of the store by local police who call him retarded?" she said.
Despite frustration at the continued stigma surrounding the disabled, Griffin is ultimately optimistic about increasing opportunities for them to lead normal lives.
''I went in through a lot of loading docks and had a lot of people tell me I couldn't go somewhere because I was in a wheelchair," she said. ''But that's changed. If I did that job today no one would blink an eye."
Peter Schworm can be reached
at schworm@globe.com 