If the new five dollar bill (right)isn’t already throwing you for a loop, get ready for more changes in your wallet.
This week the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the American Council for the Blind that the changes the U.S. Treasury Department have made to our foldable money since 2003 have not addressed the group’s concerns that our money is too similar for people of low vision to tell apart without assistance, a hardship that violates their constitutional rights.
Possible changes the ACB has requested, which are done in many other countries, include printing different denominations in different sizes, and with remarkably different color, or with raised printed areas which can be deciphered by touch.
In the court’s ruling, handed down May 20 in the District of Columbia, there is no recommendation for how the Treasury should make the bills compliant, only the admonishment that the organization could have saved tax payer dollars by making these changes part of the current redesign of money, which the Treasury Dept. says was done to foil counterfitters.
Perhaps before all is settled, there will be yet another appeal of this case, originally filed in 2002 and decided by a lower court, again in favor of the ACB, in 2006. Time will tell.
