Jo Anne Simon
In this image: a photo of Jo Anne Simon, a smiling, red-headed white woman, age sixties.
“Life isn’t a straight line.”
That is how Jo Anne Simon began answering my question about her path to disability rights work and then into political life. Simon is a unique figure in the New York political scene, an elected official whose professional roots lie in the disability community and the disability rights movement.
From an early age attuned to the nuances of language, the Yonkers-born Simon became the first in her family to attend college, intending to major in French or Latin. Perhaps influenced by a cousin with cerebral palsy, she took a degree in speech pathology instead. Her studies brought her into contact with deaf and hard of hearing people, and Simon became absorbed by the unique communication issues faced by that community—so much so that she switched to deaf education and enrolled in a master’s program at Gallaudet University (which describes itself as “the only university in the world where students live and learn using American Sign Language (ASL) and English”). There she became fluent in both ASL and signed English. Following graduation, Simon worked at Perkins School for the Blind, teaching deafblind students, then did a short stint teaching deaf students in the public schools of Fairfax County, Virginia.
Next, Simon went back to Gallaudet to run its new disability services program, which primarily involved serving students with disabilities in addition to or other than hearing impairment. That meant, among other things, that she obtained Braille reading materials (crafted by “ladies in a DC area synagogue,” Simon told me), and upgraded wheelchair accessibility at Gallaudet’s campus. Over the course of four years in that position, Simon became quite involved in the then-new field, and went to national conferences where she heard presentations by Ed Roberts, among others.
Working with students carrying the emotional burdens of living with disabilities in a nondisabled society led Simon into an interest in practicing psychology, so she enrolled at Long Island University’s clinical psychology program. Once again a student, she moved to nearby brownstone Brooklyn “to save the 75 cent subway fare” as she put it. Simon paid her way through LIU by working as an ASL interpreter and by providing remedial instruction. But she never completed her doctorate, and eventually decided that psychology was not her calling.
In the early 1980’s she worked from time to time interpreting Broadway and off Broadway shows, something she gave up in1986 when she enrolled as a night student at Fordham Law School, working full time in the securities industry and law firms until graduation. A few years after graduating, Simon became a staff attorney at the Disability Law Clinic at Hofstra Law School (which was established by the illustrious disability activist and attorney Paul G. Hearne), practiced disability law, and trained law students.
Simon began working with the bar review companies on providing access for taking the bar exam, and working with aspiring lawyers with disabilities who needed accommodations to take the exam. One of those students was Marilyn Bartlett.
Bartlett held a Ph.D. and had graduated law school, but she had a learning disability—dyslexia. She applied for additional time to take the New York State bar exam, but the request was denied. Repeated attempts to take the exam without accommodation were unsuccessful, but requests for accommodation continued to be denied. Simon filed a federal lawsuit on Bartlett’s behalf.
Simon anticipated a rapid settlement, but instead Bartlett v. New York State Board of Law Examiners became a nine-year saga, including multiple appeals and a hearing before the US Supreme Court. Appearing before then-District Judge Sonia Sotomayor, Simon prevailed. As Judge Sotomayor phrased it, “For those of us for whom words sing, sentences paint pictures, and paragraphs create panoramic views of the world, the inability to identify and process words with ease would be crippling. Plaintiff, an obviously intelligent, highly articulate individual reads slowly, haltingly, and laboriously. She simply does not read in the manner of an average person.” Sotomayor rejected the dyslexia testing method used by the Board of Law Examiners, and found that Bartlett was “disabled under the ADA and under Section 504 and that the Board's failure to accommodate her reasonably on the New York State Bar Examination amounted to discrimination.”
The Bartlett case was a watershed litigation in the field and potentially a career-making case for Simon. But even as Bartlett was in active litigation, after someone was shot across the street from her home, Simon got involved with the Boerum Hill Association. She became conversant in the issues affecting her community--traffic and transportation problems, noise and air pollution, and the like. Within a few years she was elected President of the association, and that brought her into contact with other civic and community-based organizations all along the western Brooklyn corridor. She was drawn into discussions with stakeholders about the future of the elevated Gowanus Expressway, the famously polluted Gowanus Canal, and environmental justice in general.
In her new role as community leader, Simon became acquainted with the area’s elected officials, and before long her State Assembly representative, Joan Millman, invited Simon to join the State Democratic Committee and serve as Democratic District Leader. As Simon put it, Millman “knew me, she knew that I was reliable, I had real connections to the community, and would be a partner in working in the district.”
In 2014, when Millman declined to run for reelection, Simon ran for her seat, with Millman’s endorsement, and won the election.
Over the past eight years, Assemblywoman Simon has compiled a record in disability-related issues including (of course) dyslexia, along with gun safety legislation, literacy training for incarcerated people, reproductive health rights, and campaign finance reform. In particular, on July 26, 2022, Governor Hochul signed into law a bill, sponsored by Simon, under which individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities will be able to make their own decisions, with support from trusted people in their lives, instead of losing all decision power to an appointed legal guardian.
With the creation of the new 10th Congressional District, which includes most of Brownstone Brooklyn and parts of Manhattan, Simon is running for the open seat. As Simon put it, the new Congressional district “includes my whole Assembly district and the areas of my community work. I never expected to run for Congress, but it’s compelling because I could serve more broadly on behalf of issues that I know. I have the skills, I am deeply embedded in the issues and the communities. We need an involved federal partner for our local federal issues, and I can be that person.”
A disability rights professional and attorney, not a career politician, Simon’s path has been anything but a straight line. It will be most fascinating to see what her next chapter may be.
by Warren Shaw
