Do also bear in mind that, even after the problem was realized, it still took time to write the restoration act and bring it up to where it is today with 223 supporters in the house — simply because it always takes ANY piece of legislation years to go from the “idea” stage to legal passage. The need for this legislation was first officially suggested in 2004 after the National Coalition on Disability did studies that showed how consistent the growing series of bad court precedents were from state to state and from year to year across the country. From the late 90s to 2004 may itself sound like a long time — but people first had to recognize the pattern through informal observation, then suggest that an official study be done to confirm that the problem really was a consistent trend and not just something they were projecting onto the data, and then doing the report would have to take time also.

So even though 17 years is a long time in the lives of people, it is not actually even remotely so long in the halls of law craft. If a dog year is the equivalent of human years, then think of it as 7 years of legislative life for each year of human life Just joking, so don’t take that number too literally–but to give you an idea of the difference in time scale there can be between when things are observed in the real world to when it becomes possible to do something about them in the law.