Pretty clear, if you want to "Fly the Friendly Skies," it's best to have
20/20 vision.
June 23, 1999
High Court Limits Who Is Protected by Disability
Law
Related Articles
Justices Hear Disability Cases on Vision (April 29, 1999)
Pivotal Rulings Ahead: Supreme Court to Begin Review of Americans
With Disabilities Act (April 19, 1999)
From Eyeglasses to Wheelchairs: Adjusting the Legal Bar for
Disability
(April 18, 1999)
Issue in Depth: Supreme Court Guide
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Join a Discussion on Issues Before the Supreme Court
By LINDA GREENHOUSE
ASHINGTON -- Resolving one of the most pressing
questions of federal
disability law, the Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that
people with physical
impairments who can function normally when they wear
their glasses or take their
medicine generally cannot be considered disabled and
therefore do not come within the law's
protection against employment discrimination.
By a surprisingly wide 7-2 margin, the Court took a restrictive
view of the definition of disability under the Americans With
Disabilities Act of 1990. Employers greeted the decision with
relief, saying it would prevent an uncontrollable expansion of
the law, while advocates for people with disabilities said
the court's definition of disability
would remove the law's protection from millions of people who
needed it.
The Court ruled in three separate cases, rejecting the
discrimination claims in each one by the
same 7-2 vote. The dissenters in each case were Justices John
Paul Stevens and Stephen G.
Breyer; Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote two of the majority
opinions and Justice David
H. Souter wrote one.
The losing plaintiffs were: two nearsighted women, twin
sisters with vision correctable to
20/20, whom United Airlines turned down for jobs as pilots; a
truck driver with functional
vision in only one eye, who saw normally for most purposes
but who was dismissed for not
meeting the federal vision standard for driving commercial
vehicles, and a hypertensive
automobile mechanic, whose blood pressure kept him from
meeting federal standards for
driving a truck but, when controlled by medication, left him
able to hold non-driving
mechanics' jobs.
In a separate ruling Tuesday, the Court interpreted another
provision of the Americans With
Disabilities Act to give states the obligation to care for
people with mental and other
disabilities in group homes or other non-institutionalized
settings, when medically
appropriate and not an unreasonable burden on the a state's
resources.
In the trio of employment discrimination cases, there were
several secondary issues but there
was one central question: should a "disability" be measured
in its untreated state or in light of
any corrective measures that can enable a person to function
normally?
O'Connor answered the question in the leading case, the suit
by the twin sisters against
United Airlines. The sisters flew as pilots for regional
airlines, and met federal vision
standards for airline pilots, but were turned down by United
because they did not meet its
standard for uncorrected vision of 20/40.
O'Connor said that three provisions of the disability law led
to the conclusion that people
with remediable conditions were not disabled.
First, she said, was the law's definition of disability as an
impairment that "substantially
limits one or more of the major life activities," a
definition expressed in the "present
indicative verb form," O'Connor noted. "We think the language
is properly read as requiring
that a person be presently -- not potentially or
hypothetically -- substantially limited in order
to demonstrate a disability," she said, adding that "a
'disability' exists only where an
impairment 'substantially limits' a major life activity, not
where it 'might,' 'could,' or
'would' be substantially limiting if mitigating measures were
not taken."
A person with a corrected impairment still has the
impairment, O'Connor said, "but if the
impairment is corrected it does not 'substantially limit' a
major life activity."
Second, she said, the law requires that people be assessed on
the basis of their individual
conditions, not as members of a group that is usually
affected in a particular way by an
uncorrected impairment.
Finally, O'Connor said, the findings that Congress
incorporated in the text of the law
included the statement that "some 43,000,000 Americans have
one or more physical or
mental disabilities." O'Connor said that while the source of
this figure was uncertain,
Congress could not possibly have meant to include all the
people who wear glasses or have
some other correctable problem, because the number in that
case would be closer to 160
million. "The 43 million figure reflects an understanding
that those whose impairments are
largely corrected by medication or other devices are not
'disabled' within the meaning of the
ADA," she said.
In the dissenting opinion in this case, Sutton v. United
Airlines, No. 97-1943, Stevens,
joined by Breyer, said that "in order to be faithful to the
remedial purpose of the act, we
should give it a generous, rather than a miserly,
construction." Congress's use of the 43
million figure may have been a form of "legislative myopia,"
Stevens said, that should not be
invoked to determine the scope of the law.
"Since the purpose of the ADA is to dismantle the employment
barriers based on society's
accumulated myths and fears," Stevens continued, "it is
especially ironic to deny protection
for persons with substantially limiting impairments that,
when corrected, render them fully
able and employable."
He said, referring to the sisters in the case: "If United
regards petitioners as unqualified
because they cannot see well without glasses, it seems
eminently fair for a court also to use
uncorrected vision as the basis for evaluating petitioners'
life activity of seeing."
The criticism from advocates for people with disabilities
mirrored Stevens's dissent.
Professor Chai Feldblum of Georgetown Law School, one of the
drafters of the law, said the
decisions "create the absurd result of a person being
disabled enough to be fired from a job,
but not disabled enough to challenge the firing." Sen. Tom
Harkin, D-Iowa, who was one of
the chief Senate sponsors, said the decision "undermined one
of the most basic principles of
the ADA," which he said was to "eliminate discrimination
against every individual with a
disability."
But Stephen Bokat, general counsel of the U.S. Chamber of
Commerce, praised the court's
interpretation for avoiding a "huge growth in the number of
cases." He said the most
important aspect of the rulings from an employer's
perspective was the Court's conclusion
that "creating physical criteria for a job ordinarily does
not violate the ADA." He added: "The
statute protects you from discrimination in a class of jobs,
but it does not guarantee you a
particular job."
David Fram, director of the National Employment Law
Institute, an organization here that
trains corporate managers and others on how to apply the
disabilities law, called the
decisions "a great victory for management." He said he was
"shocked" by the Court's "very
hard line." He noted that most lower courts, as well as the
Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission, had taken the opposite view.
In her opinion in the United Airlines case, O'Connor said "an
employer is free to decide that
physical characteristics or medical conditions that do not
rise to level of am impairment --
such as one's height, build, or singing voice -- are
preferable to others, just as it is free to
decide that some limiting, but not substantially limiting,
impairments make individuals less
than ideally suited for a job."
O'Connor rejected a suggestion in the dissenting opinion that
even people with artificial
limbs would not be considered disabled under the majority's
analysis. People may be highly
functional with prosthetic devices but still be
"substantially limited" in such activities as
walking or running, she said.
She noted that under another provision of the law, people
with correctable impairments may
still be covered as disabled if an employer "regards" them as
disabled. However, the
majority's analysis of the law's "regarded as disabled" prong
appeared to be somewhat
limiting; to come within this section, O'Connor said, a
person would have to be regarded as
"unable to work in a broad class of jobs," not just the job
in question.
The other two cases were Murphy v. United Parcel Service, No.
97-1992, and
Albertson's v. Kirkingburg, No. 98-591. Chief Justice William
H. Rehnquist and
Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy, Clarence Thomas,
and Ruth Bader Ginsburg
joined the majority opinions by O'Connor and Souter.
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