High Court Reins In Disability Law’s Scope

The Supreme Court sharply narrowed the reach of the federal antidiscrimination law for people with disabilities Tuesday, ruling that it was not intended to protect workers with treatable impairments such as bad eyesight, hypertension or diabetes.

The 7-2 ruling, which delighted employers and angered advocates for the disabled, allows companies to fire workers with such physical impairments or medical conditions--or not hire them. Sometimes those workers were considered safety risks and other times, critics said, companies have dismissed them to avoid higher health insurance costs.

At the same time, the court decision allows companies to block lawsuits under the law by showing that fired employees were capable of doing their jobs and thus could not be deemed disabled.

Nine years ago Congress passed the Americans with Disabilities Act and made it illegal to discriminate against a “qualified individual with a disability.” Since then, the question of who has a disability has become one of the most important and disputed issues of law acrossthe nation. in the three cases decided Tuesday, the court made clear, it was determined to limit the number of workers who can claim to have disabilities under the law. Advocates said that the act’s promise has had a positive effect in the workplace, however, because it has encouraged employers to give equal opportunities to those with physical or mental disabilities.

But in the courts the law has been interpreted narrowly and has not helped or aided many persons who claim to have disabilities.

Disability-rights advocates, stunned by the court’s ruling, condemned the decisions for ignoring the intent of Congress. They also said that workers will find themselves in a “Catch 22” situation in which they are either too capable to have a “disability” or too disabled to be “qualified” for a job.

One of the three cases decided Tuesday was that of Vaughn Murphy, a Kansas truck mechanic who was fired from his job by United Parcel Service because the company believed that his unusually high blood pressure made him an unacceptable risk on the job. His condition, even after treatment, violated company medical standards, the firm said.

He sued his former employer under the disabilities law, claiming that he was discriminated against because of his condition.

But the high court threw out his case (Murphy vs. UPS, 97-1992) and ruled that he has no disability. Under medication, Murphy is able to work effectively repairing trucks, the court said, noting that he had done so for 22 years before his firing.

No one disputes that those who are blind, deaf or cannot walk have disabilities and come under the law’s protection. However, the court ruled that even these clearly disabled persons may not win discrimination claims if they are not “qualified” for the jobs.

In a second case decided Tuesday, the justices threw out a claim brought under the disabilities law by an Oregon truck driver who is nearly blind in one eye. Hallie Kirkingburg had driven large trucks for more than a decade with impaired vision and had a spotless driving record when he was fired. The company said that his impaired vision made him a safety risk.

Nonetheless, the justices questioned whether he had a disability and ruled that, if he was nearly blind in one eye, he was not qualified to drive trucks (Albertsons vs. Kirkingburg, 98-591).

And in a third case, the court rejected a discrimination claim brought by twin sisters who wanted to fly jets for United Airlines. Each had a commercial pilot’s license but needed glasses for 20/20 vision.

United rejected the sisters’ applications because, without glasses, their vision was poor. The high court in turn rejected their discrimination claim because, with glasses, the two sisters could see well (Sutton vs. United Airlines, 97-1943).

The Clinton administration and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission had sided with the workers in each of the three cases.

Government lawyers maintained that the law was intended to protect the tens of millions of Americans who have medical conditions or impairments such as epilepsy, diabetes, asthma, heart disease or cancer which could leave them vulnerable to job discrimination.

But Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, writing for the court, said that these persons are not covered if their medications allow them to work normally.

Georgetown law professor Chai Feldblum, who helped draft the law nine years ago, found the ruling bizarre.

“This radically restricts the number of people who come under the law’s protection,” he said. “I suspect before today persons who were hard of hearing or had epilepsy and diabetes thought they had a disability. This creates the absurd result of a person being disabled enough to be fired from a job but not disabled enough to challenge the firing.”

But lawyers for the nation’s employers hailed the outcome and said that it will spare companies from having to fight thousands of lawsuits from workers with common impairments.

“This is a victory for the truly disabled,” said Washington attorney Thomas Hungar, who represented UPS in the case filed by the Kansas truck mechanic. “Congress did not pass the Americans with impairments act.”

Stephen Bokat, general counsel for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said that his organization is “extremely pleased.”

“They went with the business community right down the line,” Bokat said. “The most significant aspect of the opinions makes clear that employers can consider physical conditions and attributes and prefer some over others for that reason.”

Construction companies have been plagued, he said, with discrimination claims from workers with bad backs. Most of those claims will be tossed out of court because the workers are not totally disabled. “They may not be able to do that particular job [in heavy construction] but they can work,” Bokat said. “If these cases had gone the other way, there would have been a huge flood of these claims.”

The justices clearly had the same concern in mind. O’Connor, speaking for the majority, said that the law cited 43 million Americans as having disabilities. But vastly more people could be considered disabled if common ailments are included. At least 100 million people in the United States have vision impairments, 28 million are hard of hearing and nearly 50 million others have high blood pressure, she said.

“Congress did not intend to bring under the statute’s protection all those whose uncorrected conditions amount to disabilities,” she said. “Those whose impairments are largely corrected by medication or other devices are not ‘disabled’ within the meaning of ADA.”

In dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens said that Congress had passed the law with the intent of protecting those who suffered discrimination because of disabilities. “I believe that, in order to be faithful to the remedial purpose of the act, we should give it a generous, rather than a miserly, construction.” He said that the court’s “crabbed vision” of the law would appear to exclude even a person with an artificial leg, since the prosthetic device largely corrects the disability and permits the individual to walk. Only Justice Stephen G. Breyer joined the dissent.

The tone of Tuesday’s opinions came as something of a surprise. Last year, in its first direct ruling on the federal antidiscrimination law, the court gave it a liberal interpretation. On a 5-4 vote, the justices said that a person with HIV, but no symptoms of AIDS, had a “disability” and came under the law’s shield. That ruling, in Bragdon vs. Abbott, concerned a Maine dentist who refused to treat a woman with HIV but it did not interpret the law’s employment provisions.

Tuesday’s decisions are consistent, however, with the tenor of rulings in the lower courts. Ohio State University professor Ruth Colker has tracked cases filed under the disabilities law and found that more than nine in 10 plaintiffs had their cases thrown out of court before trial.

The high court’s rulings will make it more difficult for these workers, Colker said. “I’m concerned for the whole category of people who need some reasonable accommodation to be able to work, such as the diabetic who needs regular insulation injections.”

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MENTALLY DISABLED WIN

Supreme Court rejects ‘unnecessary segregation’ of states’ mentally disabled. A10

* PUNITIVE DAMAGES

High court gives workplace bias victims a limited right to punitive damages. A10