Federal law will soon dictate the design of mini-golf courses, the nature of railings at fishing piers, and the height of hotel light-switches. But that’s just a sample of what’s coming your way courtesy of expansive new rules under the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”).

The ADA is the regulatory behemoth that may keep more American lawyers employed than any other law ever enacted. It has compelled businesses and government to spend untold billions to redesign buildings and other spaces – and also to defend lawsuits.

Despite its smothering impact, I can’t tar this one as a Democrats-gone-wild catastrophe.  The first President Bush signed the ADA into law, and the new regulations arrive on Bush No. 2’s watch.

The New York Times reports that these regulations are “far-reaching.(Coming from the Times, that alone should give you pause.) The Times lists the following as highlights:

• At least half the holes on miniature golf courses must be designed so the disabled can hit every stroke without obstruction. 
    
• 25 percent of the railings at fishing piers must not be higher than 34 inches, so a wheelchair-bound person can fish over them.
    
• Hotel room light switches must not be over 48 inches high. The current maximum is 54 inches.

There’s much more — regarding swimming pools, concert halls, hotels, and a requirement that sports stadiums flash safety information for the hearing-impaired on scoreboards.

The cost to implement these new regulations is about $23 billion. Government officials claim this cost is compensated for by “public benefits” of $54 billion. Predictably, some advocates for the disabled say the new regulations don’t go far enough, reports the Times. How much would be enough? We don’t learn the answer, but can confidently predict that limit will never be reached.

The new regulations aren’t an unqualified victory for “disabled rights,” however. Creatures such as monkeys and ferrets no longer qualify as service animals, reports the Times:

When the existing rules were adopted in the early 1990s, the Justice Department said, few people anticipated the current trend toward ‘the use of wild, exotic or unusual species’ as service animals.

The proposed rules define a service animal as ‘any dog or other common domestic animal individually trained to do work or perform tasks’ for a person with a physical or mental disability.
Under this definition, the administration says, monkeys could not qualify as service animals, nor would reptiles; amphibians; rabbits, ferrets and rodents; or most farm animals.

Under the rules, a hotel, restaurant, theater, store or public park could ask a person with a disability to remove a service animal if the animal was out of control or not housebroken, or if it posed a direct threat to the health or safety of others.

By way of example, the rules say that a theater could exclude a dog that disrupted a live performance by repeated barking.

But what if the dog’s barking isn’t sufficiently “repeated,” or if the “repeated barking” occurs at a movie instead of a “live performance?” Don’t we need more regulations to clarify these critical points?

At least we’ve learned this: You can legally complain in a restaurant if a guide dog lunges onto your table and grabs the steak off your fork, or if you discover while eating your dessert that the dog is not housebroken.

A reasonable law that enhanced access for people with disabilities would be a good thing.  But in the ADA’s case, we refuse to consider the trade-offs. At what point does fine-tuning access for the disabled impose excessive costs on businesses?  When does pushing for more protection for one class of citizens infringe on the freedom of others? 

Unfortunately, when it comes to the ADA, we abandoned balancing considerations of cost and freedom long ago. Today, we’re relegated to meaningless discussions about mini-golf,  monkeys, and “repeated barking.”