Cite as: 527 U. S. 471 (1999)
Opinion of the Court
figure of 36 million disabled persons quoted in the versions of the bill introduced in 1988). That report detailed the difficulty of estimating the number of disabled persons due to varying operational definitions of disability. National Council on Disability, Toward Independence 10 (1986). It explained that the estimates of the number of disabled Americans ranged from an overinclusive 160 million under a "health conditions approach," which looks at all conditions that impair the health or normal functional abilities of an individual, to an underinclusive 22.7 million under a "work disability approach," which focuses on individuals' reported ability to work. Id., at 10-11. It noted that "a figure of 35 or 36 million [was] the most commonly quoted estimate." Id., at 10. The 36 million number included in the 1988 bill's findings thus clearly reflects an approach to defining disabilities that is closer to the work disabilities approach than the health conditions approach.
This background also provides some clues to the likely source of the figure in the findings of the 1990 Act. Roughly two years after issuing its 1986 report, the National Council on Disability issued an updated report. See On the Threshold of Independence (1988). This 1988 report settled on a more concrete definition of disability. It stated that 37.3 million individuals have "difficulty performing one or more basic physical activities," including "seeing, hearing, speaking, walking, using stairs, lifting or carrying, getting around outside, getting around inside, and getting into or out of bed." Id., at 19. The study from which it drew this data took an explicitly functional approach to evaluating disabilities. See U. S. Dept. of Commerce, Bureau of Census, Disability, Functional Limitation, and Health Insurance Coverage: 1984/85, p. 2 (1986). It measured 37.3 million persons with a "functional limitation" on performing certain basic activities when using, as the questionnaire put it, "special aids," such as glasses or hearing aids, if the person usually used such aids. Id., at 1, 47. The number of dis-
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