The following Washington Post article gives more detail about the current
Supreme Court cases regarding the ADA and "who is disabled?" This was
posted on another discussion list - The Institute for Forensic Psychology
- (http://www.psycheval.com/discuss/messages/35.html
For those who are interested I'm also posting in a separate message some
excerpts from the ADA, and questions and answers on interpretation -
these are from JAN - Job Accomodations Network -(janweb.icdi.wvu.edu/ )
- a great site.
It was probably inevitable that cases filed under the ADA would
eventually get to the Supreme Court - hopefully the system will work and
the Court will uphold and clarify the meaning and purpose of the ADA .
Surely these rulings will have an impact on other types of disabilities
as well. Does anyone know if a decision was made in the Cleveland vs
Policy Management case described in this article?
It's hard to understand why such a large portion of the ADA covers
employment, if it is applicable only to those whose disabilities prevent
them from working, as the lower court judges ruled.
Linda
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[Gary L. Fischler & Assoc. PA, Inc. The Institute for Forensic
Psychology]
Five Cases at Supreme Court Could Affect Disabilities Law
Posted by Joan Biskupic on February 21, 1999 at 13:45:34:
Five Cases at Supreme Court Could Affect Disabilities Law
Job Opportunities, Employers' Responsibilities at Stake
By Joan Biskupic
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 21, 1999
Washington Post, Page A03
Karen Sutton and Kimberly Hinton are twin sisters whose dream of flying
for a big airline has made them a symbol of the legal morass that the
nation's disabilities laws have become.
When the sisters from Spokane applied to be pilots for United Air Lines,
they were turned away after the company contended they were both too
nearsighted to take a place in the cockpit. So they sued under the
Americans with Disabilities Act, but courts said the law does not cover
people who can correct their disability (in their case, with glasses) and
get along as well as anyone else.
To the sisters and others with serious handicaps that can be improved by
taking medicine or using some device, it is a Catch-22: They lose out on
jobs because of their condition but do not qualify as disabled under the
law. In the view of many employers, the law was not designed for
relatively common problems but rather to shelter a small, discrete group
of disabled people who have long suffered discrimination.
Now, the sisters' case joins four others before the Supreme Court this
term that could profoundly affect the landmark disabilities law passed by
Congress nearly a decade ago. Eventual rulings in these disputes will
determine how easily people with disabilities can find their way into the
nation's work force and how much financial responsibility employers
should bear to accommodate them.
"The statute is not just about protecting people in wheelchairs or those
who are totally blind," contends the sisters' lawyer, Van Aaron Hughes.
"It is about protecting anyone with any significant impairment who is
being prejudged" about his or her ability to do the job.
The legal dilemmas as well as larger social policy questions about what
the term "disabled" means and who the ADA truly benefits are just
emerging. More than 20 percent of all job discrimination complaints filed
with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission now include grounds
based on disabilities.
Advocates say the law has changed public attitudes, opened new
opportunities to people with myriad disabilities and brought dignity to
their lives. But critics say the ADA has become another tool of frivolous
litigation wielded more by problem employees with minor ailments than by
individuals truly shut out because of discrimination.
Since the law went into effect, about 100,000 complaints have been filed
with the EEOC. About half of those were found to have no "reasonable
cause," or grounds. Of those complaints that did go forward through EEOC
proceedings, a relatively modest $211 million was paid out by businesses
to the handicapped.
Now, the Supreme Court is poised to pick up where Congress left off when
it passed the law making it illegal for an employer to discriminate
against a "qualified individual with a disability." The law also protects
the disabled against bias in housing, medical care and places that serve
the public.
A record five ADA disputes will be heard over the next two months,
beginning next week when the justices take up the case of a stroke victim
in Texas who says her boss refused to provide retraining, her colleagues
mocked her speech impediment and she was fired after being told she would
never be able to do anything again.
Soon after Carolyn Cleveland suffered a stroke, she applied for Social
Security disability. With some rehabilitation, however, she was able to
return to work part time at Policy Management Systems Corp., where she
checked the backgrounds of prospective employees of the firm's clients.
Cleveland notified the Social Security Administration she no longer
needed benefits. Eventually, after what she says were continual taunts
from co-workers and refusal by her company to help her accommodate her
disability, her performance suffered and she was fired.
The question is whether an individual who has applied for Social Security
disability benefits, but then returned to work, can claim in an ADA
lawsuit that she was "qualified" for the job and discriminated against. A
federal appeals court said the application for benefits creates a
presumption that the person is not qualified.
The case, Cleveland v. Policy Management Systems Corp., is being closely
watched by a variety of advocates, including those representing the
mentally retarded, elderly and people with AIDS, and by employers,
including the Equal Employment Advisory Council, which argues that courts
should presume once someone has applied for Social Security benefits she
is not "qualified" for the job under the ADA's coverage.
A larger issue to be addressed by the justices in three April cases is
how to define "disabled"-the foundation of any ADA claim. If bad eyesight
can be corrected, can it be the basis for a job discrimination lawsuit?
If medicine can reduce high blood pressure, can a mechanic claim a
trucking company fired him because of his hypertension?
Sutton and Hinton say it should not matter whether the disability can be
corrected by drugs, glasses or something else. But United's lawyer points
to the ADA's language specifically covering people whose impairment
"substantially limits one or more major life activities," and says the
availability of glasses and contact lenses means the sisters' myopia is
not substantially limiting. "Congress did not intend that a minor and
relatively common impairment such as nearsightedness . . . be a covered
disability," United lawyer Lisa Hogan wrote in a brief.
Ruling for the airlines in Sutton v. United Air Lines, the 10th U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals declared Sutton and Hinton "cannot have it both
ways." The court said if they are "disabled" because their uncorrected
vision substantially restricts their ability to see, they cannot be
qualified for pilot jobs. And if they are qualified because their vision
is correctable, the court said, they cannot be limited in "the major life
activity" of seeing and are therefore beyond ADA protection. Other
federal courts have ruled the opposite, that disabilities should be
determined without any mitigating measures, and it will now fall to the
Supreme Court to resolve the conflict.
Sutton and Hinton contend that not everyone who wears glasses should be
considered disabled, but the severity of their bad vision (about 20/200
in the right eye, 20/400 in the left) qualifies them. The two other
related cases involve a truck driver who is blind in one eye (Albertsons
v. Kirkingburg) and a mechanic with high blood pressure (Murphy v.
United Parcel Service).
In a fifth case, Olmstead v. L.C., the justices will address states'
responsibility for providing treatment and rehabilitation in the
community, rather than in institutions, for the mentally disabled.
It has taken nearly a decade for core questions of disability rights to
advance to the court. Last term, the justices ruled in their first case
on the ADA. In it they held, 5 to 4, that people who are HIV-positive,
even those with no overt symptoms of the deadly disease, fall within the
ADA shelter.
"If these new cases come out in favor of the persons with disabilities,"
said Georgetown law professor Chai Feldblum, who pressed for the
legislation more than a decade ago, "that will make a huge difference to
giving people a sense of comfort that the ADA truly protects their rights
to be part of the community."
From the standpoint of employers, the court needs to make clear what
physical conditions are covered so that businesses know what financial
liability they face.
"Employers view the ADA as a very well-intentioned law with a very
laudable purpose, but there are people who have tried to abuse it over
the years," said Sussan Mahallati Kysela of the National Chamber
Litigation Center. "It's become important for the Supreme Court to
clarify who is disabled."
DEFINING DISABILITIES
From 1992 to 1998, there were 108,939 complaints filed with the Equal
Employment Opportunity Commission under the the Americans with
Disabilities Act.
Impairments most often cited (as a percentage of all cases)
Back: 16.7%
Emotional/psychiatric: 13.7%
Neurological: 10.8%
Extremities: 9.6%
Heart: 4.0%
Diabetes: 3.6%
Substance abuse: 3.0%
Hearing: 2.8%
Blood disorders: 2.6%
Vision: 2.5%
Cancer: 2.4%
Asthma: 1.7%
SOURCE: Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
