Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973

Category Two: Record of a Disability - Examples

Let's look at some examples of how this category works.

Example #1

Say, for example, that a particular customer who wants a particular type of training took some related courses in the past at a community college. The training provider asks for and gets permission to get copies of the customer's records from the community college. When the records arrive, they indicate that the customer dropped out of school because she was diagnosed with breast cancer and needed to undergo surgery and chemotherapy. Based on this information alone, the training provider decides that the training course would be too strenuous for the customer and refuses to admit her to the training program.

Suppose the customer did indeed have breast cancer, but her treatment was successful and she is now cancer-free. If her past cancer substantially limited one or more of her major life activities, then she is a person with a past history of an actual disability, and she is protected by Federal disability law, including Section 504. The training provider may not discriminate against her on the basis of that past history.

Example #2

Now suppose the customer did not have breast cancer at all. The community college got her records mixed up with the records of another student who did have breast cancer. Assuming that breast cancer would have substantially limited the customer's major life activities, the customer is still protected by Section 504 and other Federal disability nondiscrimination laws, because she has been misclassified as having had a disability in the past.