December 2005

• A Message from the Chair:
  Carolyn Herbst
• Memorial to
  Sandra Feldman
• Legal Issues:
  The Rehnquist Legacy and
  John Roberts
  on the ADA
• A Message from
  Uft Liaison: Eugene Rubin
• Committee Member
  Wins Award at
  Teacher
  Union Day —
  November 2005
• The Committee honors
• Feedback Sheet
• 

Legal Issues:

The Rehnquist Legacy and
John Roberts on the ADA.

How did the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist of the U.S. Supreme Court shape the court regarding decisions pertaining to persons with disabilities and the Americans with Disabilities Act?

Justice Rehnquist, who died on Sept. 3 at the age of 80, was a conservative jurist. He believed in a philosophy of judicial restraint. Regarding the ADA, the court decided 18 cases, most of which were employment related and concerned the definition of disability. Since 1998, most of these decisions limited the scope of the disabilities law, according to the National Disability Law Reporter (Sept. 15, 2005).

The Rehnquist court effectively raised the bar for persons attempting to establish disability under the ADA. In cases such as Sutton v. United Airlines, Inc. (1999) and Murphy v. United Parcel Service (1999), “the court held that mitigating measures such as eyeglasses or medication are relevant to the determination of whether or not a condition constitutes an impairment. For example, if an individual’s vision is correctable by eyeglasses, that individual’s visual condition would not be considered an impairment.”

Justice Rehnquist wrote the majority opinion in an important case. The decision in Board of Trustees of the University of Alabama v. Garrett (2001) stated that the 11th Amendment to the Constitution prohibits suits by state employees to recover monetary damages under Title I of the ADA. He wrote that “states are not required by the 14th Amendment to make special accommodations for the disabled, so long as their actions towards such individuals are rational.” He looked at the legislative history of the ADA and concluded that Congress’s authority under this amendment is “appropriately exercised only in response to state transgressions.”

Justice Rehnquist dissented in the 2004 case of Tennessee v. Lane, which involved access to state courts by individuals with disabilities. The case concerns Title II of the ADA, the section of the law that prohibits states and local governments from discriminating on the basis of disability in the provision of public services or programs. Justice Rehnquist disagreed with the majority opinion in the case, believing that there was an important difference between access to a courtroom and access to the courts. “We have never held that a person has a constitutional right to make his way into a courtroom without any external assistance,” the chief justice wrote.

The new chief justice of the Supreme Court is John Roberts. At hearings of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Sept. 15, Roberts responded as a strict constructionist in interpreting the U.S. Constitution as it relates to legislation like ADA. He said that the ADA should always be interpreted consistent with congressional intent, but that high court justices need to “look at a lot of different factors in trying to flesh that out,” according to the National Disability Law Reporter (Sept. 29).

Before becoming a judge, Mr. Roberts had represented the Toyota auto company in the landmark case of Toyota Motor Manufacturing, v. Williams in 2002. Ella Williams, an assembly line worker for Toyota, suffered from pain in her hand, wrist and arm that was diagnosed as carpal tunnel syndrome. When her doctor’s work restrictions for her were not being accommodated satisfactorily she sued under the ADA. Mr. Roberts argued that the ADA should be narrowly interpreted to protect only the “truly disabled.”

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit found for the plaintiff, ruling her disabled within the meaning of the ADA, but the Supreme Court overturned that decision. The high court said that in order to qualify as an individual with a disability, the lower court must determine whether the impairments substantially limited the person’s performance of tasks that are of “central importance to most people’s daily lives.” The 6th Circuit court had only considered whether Ms. Williams was limited in her ability to perform a limited class of manual tasks. This, the Supreme Court said, was the appeals court’s error. So this case narrowed the definition of what constitutes disability under Title I of the ADA.

At the confirmation hearings, Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wisc.) asked Judge Roberts about what was said during oral arguments on the Williams case. Did the prospective chief justice agree with the statement made by one of the justices at the time that the ADA was primarily intended to protect people who are wheelchair-bound? Judge Roberts did not quite remember that statement and said that that particular definition of disability “does not contain that type of restriction.”

The National Disability Law Reporter stated: “The nominee (Roberts) demurred from commenting further on the definitional issue, saying he did not want to comment on issues that might come before the court,” (Sept. 29, page 6).

— ABBE NOSOFF

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Carolyn Herbst, Committee Chairperson • Abbe Nosoff, Editor/Writer • Eugene Rubin, UFT Committee Liaison