Reinert No Title
| Jurisdiction | United States,Federal |
| Citation | Vol. 2002 No. 06 |
| Publication year | 2002 |
June 2002. Reinert No Title
Joseph A. Reinert, Esq., & Marilyn A. Mahusky, Esq.
Recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions under the Americans with Disabilities Act(Fn1)("ADA") have significantly changed the landscape for individuals with disabilities and their families, and in turn for attorneys with a focus on disability law. This article examines four recent, significant Supreme Court decisions which have affected three separate yet interrelated areas of disability law: Board of Trustees of the University of Alabama v. Garrett,(Fn2)in the area of sovereign immunity - the barring of suits against states for money damages by private parties; Sutton v. United Airlines(Fn3)and Toyota Motor Manufacturing v. Williams,(Fn4)related to private employment and specifically the definition of "disability"; and, PGA Tour Inc. v. Martin,(Fn5)related to what accommodations are required to be made by places of public accommodation. Further, the article analyzes the ramifications of these decisions on the practice of disability law.
Board of Trustees of the University of Alabama v. Garrett(Fn6)is the latest in a series of Supreme Court decisions during the last five years that have restricted individuals' ability to sue states under federal law and limited Congress' power to abrogate states' Eleventh Amendment immunity.(Fn7)In a 5-4 decision, the Garrett Court held that Congress lacked the authority under Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment to abrogate states' Eleventh Amendment immunity to suits brought by private parties for money damages in federal court under Title I of the ADA.(Fn8)
At issue in Garrett was whether Congress acted pursuant to a valid grant of constitutional authority, the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, in enacting Title I of the ADA. Relying on its decision in Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Center, Inc.,(Fn9)the Court determined that people with disabilities were not entitled to greater than rational-basis protections. Since people with disabilities do not qualify for a 'quasisuspect' classification, state action that 'rationally furthers the purpose identified by the State' will be sustained.(Fn10)
Concluding that states are not required by the Fourteenth Amendment to make special accommodations for people with disabilities,(Fn11)the Garrett Court raised the bar for proving that the state's conduct is irrational. The party challenging the alleged unconstitutional conduct bears the burden of negating any "reasonably conceivable set of facts" to justify the state's actions.(Fn12)Conduct that is based on negative attitudes or fear alone, as that suffered by the Garrett plaintiffs, does not give rise to a constitutional violation.(Fn13)As long as the state's actions toward people with disabilities is rational, it is permissible. As acknowledged by the Court, the state's conduct may be rational even if "the job-qualification requirements . . . make no allowance for [people with disabilities]."(Fn14)
Turning next to an examination of whether Congress identified a history and pattern of unconstitutional employment discrimination by the states against people with disabilities, the Court concluded that the legislative record of the ADA simply failed to support such a claim of historical discrimination by the states in its employment of people with disabilities.(Fn15)Not surprisingly, the dissent was critical of the majority's conclusions. Both sides exhaustively examined the legislative history to support their ends, either that there was sufficient evidence of a "pattern of unconstitutional discrimination on which 5 legislation must be based,"(Fn16)or there was not. In the end, however, the result turned on the degree to which either side saw the ADA's remedy of requiring state employers to make reasonable accommodations for the known disabilities of their qualified employees as reasonable to remedy the historical unequal and disparate treatment of people with disabilities. As summarized by the concurrence, "[t]he failure of a State to revise policies now seen as incorrect under a new understanding of proper policy does not always constitute the purposeful and intentional action required to make out a violation of the Equal Protection Clause."(Fn17)
Because a majority of the Court was not convinced that the legislative history of the ADA supported a finding that the actions of the states in terminating the employment of employees with disabilities on the basis of their disabilities established a pattern of unconstitutional discrimination, and that the rights and remedies created by the ADA were not congruent and proportional to the alleged unconstitutional conduct,(Fn18)Title I, as applied to the states, was struck down as an invalid exercise of Congressional power under 5.
While the Garrett decision was explicitly limited to Title I of the ADA,(Fn19)it is likely that state defendants will seek to extend its reasoning to Title II of the ADA as well. In fact, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has already considered whether Title II of the ADA and 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 validly abrogate state sovereign immunity. In Garcia v. S.U.N.Y Health Sciences Center of Brooklyn,(Fn20)the Court held that "Title II in its entirety exceeds Congress' authority under 5."(Fn21)The Court salvaged, however, Title II's remedial scheme by determining that Congress had the authority under 5 to permit private damage suits against states when the violation was motivated by discriminatory animus...
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