512
Stevens, J., dissenting
mates, see ante, at 487, may be inflated because they do not appear to exclude impairments that are not substantially limiting). It is equally undeniable, however, that "43 million" is not a fixed cap on the Act's protected class: By including the "record of" and "regarded as" categories, Congress fully expected the Act to protect individuals who lack, in the Court's words, "actual" disabilities, and therefore are not counted in that number.
What is more, in mining the depths of the history of the 43 million figure—surveying even agency reports that predate the drafting of any of this case's controlling legislation—the Court fails to acknowledge that its narrow approach may have the perverse effect of denying coverage for a sizeable portion of the core group of 43 million. The Court appears to exclude from the Act's protected class individuals with controllable conditions such as diabetes and severe hypertension that were expressly understood as substantially limiting impairments in the Act's Committee Reports, see supra, at 500-501—and even, as the footnote in the margin shows, in the studies that produced the 43 million figure.6 Given the inability to make the 43 million figure fit any consistent method of interpreting the word "disabled," it would be far wiser for the Court to follow—or at least to mention— the documents reflecting Congress' contemporaneous understanding of the term: the Committee Reports on the actual legislation.
6 See National Council on Disability, Toward Independence 12 (1986) (hypertension); U. S. Dept. of Commerce, Bureau of Census, Disability, Functional Limitation, and Health Insurance Coverage: 1984/85, p. 51 (1986) (hypertension, diabetes); National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research, Data on Disability from the National Health Interview Survey 1983-1985, p. 33 (1988) (epilepsy, diabetes, hypertension); U. S. Dept. of Commerce, Bureau of Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States 114-115 (1989) (Tables 114 and 115) (diabetes, hypertension); Mathematica Policy Research, Inc., Digest of Data on Persons with Disabilities 3 (1984) (hypertension, diabetes).
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