Defeating the UN Disabilities Treaty

The Senate rejected the UN Disabilities Treaty today. According to treaty opponents, approval would have given UN bodies in Geneva the ability to set standards and regulations that would have to be met by parents of disabled children across the USA. This would have curtailed the ability to home school these children or to send them to religious schools. Treaty supporters said that the there would not have granted any power to the UN bodies and that the treaty would just have required the same things that the Americans with Disabilities Act already required. That led to the salient question of why approve the treaty if it did nothing. The best the supporters could come up with was that the treaty would allow the USA to get involved with the treatment of disabled Americans who travel abroad. Of course, the USA can already get involved with that issue, and it chooses not to do so.

The real truth is that a treaty like this one which grants powers to an international body over American families is a bad idea. Constitutional protections which limit American laws would not apply to treaties. We know the limits of government power under American law. Substitution of unlimited international bodies for American government institutions will not be an improvement.