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News Release
NCD #02-371
July 25, 2002
Contact: Mark S. Quigley
202-272-2004
202-272-2074 TTY
mquigley@ncd.gov
The Supreme Court and the Americans
with Disabilities Act
Op Ed by Joan M. Durocher, 2002 NCD
Fellow
WASHINGTON-July 26, 2002, is the twelfth anniversary
of the passage of the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
The National Council on Disability (NCD) is issuing this piece to
commemorate this important anniversary as well as draw attention
to this term's Supreme Court rulings on ADA that will significantly
affect the lives of people with disabilities.
The Supreme Court's decisions this term are somewhat
inexplicable. The most baffling question raised by these decisions
is just who is covered under ADA?
This term included opinions such as Chevron U.S.A.
Inc. v. Mario Echazabal, 122 S.Ct. 2045 (2002), in which the
Court ruled in a 9-0 decision that ADA allows employers, not people
with disabilities, to decide whether the risk of a certain job is
too great for the person with a disability, therefore excluding
people with disabilities from applying for or continuing to work
in a position even if they pose no threat to others and they can
perform all job functions and meet external health and safety standards.
The Supreme Court's endorsement of the "threat to self" defense
encourages the view that people with disabilities need to be protected
from themselves and from their career choices.
In US Airways, Inc. v. Barnett, 122 S.Ct. 1516
(2002), the Court held that a request for reassignment to keep an
employee with a disability working would most likely be found unreasonable
when it conflicts with the terms of an employer's seniority system.
The Court held that an employer's showing that an accommodation
violates a seniority system's rules will ordinarily be sufficient
to show that an accommodation is not reasonable. The majority opinion
bases its ruling, in part, on the view that seniority systems "provide
important employee benefits by creating and fulfilling employee
expectations of fair, uniform treatment." This reasoning justifies
giving senior workers more fair and uniform treatment at the expense
of disabled workers' own expectations of fair and uniform treatment
under ADA.
In Toyota Motor Manufacturing, Kentucky, Inc. v.
Ella Williams, 122 S.Ct. 681 (2002), the Court decided that
an individual must be severely restricted in performing manual tasks
of central importance to most people's daily lives in order to be
disabled under ADA. In this decision, the Court ruled that an assembly
line worker with carpal tunnel syndrome was not disabled under ADA.
The decision seems to suggest that people must be visibly and functionally
unable to perform in certain specific, socially expected ways before
they are entitled to the protection of ADA.
And yet, even if an individual does somehow meet all
of these standards, the Supreme Court decided in Barnes, et al.
v. Gorman, 122 S.Ct. 2097 (2002), another 9-0 decision this
term, that punitive damages may not be awarded in private suits
brought under §202 of ADA and §504 of the Rehabilitation Act. In
that case, Jeffrey Gorman, who uses a wheelchair and a catheter/urine
bag, was injured while being taken to jail in a van after his arrest
for trespassing at a Kansas City bar. Police officers removed him
from his wheelchair, propped him on a bench in the van and tied
him to the seat with his belt. During the trip to jail, he fell,
injured his shoulder and back and burst his urine bag, which resulted
in a urinary tract infection and other serious injuries.
So, who is covered under the Americans with Disabilities
Act? Clearly, this Supreme Court has sparked an intense debate on
the issue.
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