Court Shields States From Law Aiding Disabled

The Supreme Court freed the states in large measure Wednesday from the landmark federal law that protects disabled Americans, ruling that a state employee who is a victim of discrimination cannot sue for damages.

The 5-4 ruling is the latest victory for states’ rights at the Supreme Court under Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist.

Last year, in a similar 5-4 ruling, the court said that states could not be sued by older workers who said they had suffered age discrimination.

The effect of Wednesday’s decision will vary by state. California has a strong state antidiscrimination law that protects workers with disabilities. Alabama does not.

It is not clear where the Supreme Court is headed next in the area of federalism, the balance of power between the states and Washington. Under Rehnquist, the conservative majority has steadily limited the power of Congress and shielded the states.

Last May, for example, the court struck down as unconstitutional the Violence Against Women Act, a new law that allowed victims of sexual assaults to sue their attackers in federal court.

Wednesday’s ruling came in a case from Alabama in which a nursing supervisor was demoted after taking time off to be treated for breast cancer. Patricia Garrett later sued her employer, the hospital at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She claimed that she had suffered discrimination because of her disease, even though she had recovered her health.

In their defense, the hospital’s lawyers said that, as a branch of the state, they had “sovereign immunity.” This recently minted constitutional doctrine shields states from federal laws.

In Alabama vs. Garrett, 99-1240, the court sided with the state, leaving the nation’s nearly 5 million state employees without the full protection of the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990.

Rehnquist, speaking for the court, said that states may refuse to hire workers who are blind, deaf or wheelchair-bound. Further, Congress may not empower the victims of such discrimination to sue for money, he said.

“States are not required . . . to make special accommodations for the disabled,” he said. “They could quite hardheadedly--and hardheartedly--hold to job qualification requirements that do not make allowance for the disabled.”

Congress passed the disabilities act--overwhelmingly--to change that. Former President Bush signed the measure into law and hailed it as a notable advance in civil rights. He also filed a friend-of-the-court brief in this case urging the justices to uphold its provisions.

The law required all employers--including state agencies--to make “reasonable accommodations” for “a qualified individual with a disability.” If an employer refused, the aggrieved worker could sue for money damages in federal court.

But Rehnquist held that Congress did not have the power to require states to follow this law. “It is the responsibility of this court, not Congress, to define the substance of constitutional guarantees,” he asserted. His opinion was joined by Justices Sandra Day O’Connor, Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy and Clarence Thomas.

Garrett’s lawyer said that Alabama has a law that forbids bias against disabled people but that it is toothless.

“You can’t win damages or attorney’s fees. If we had a good law, we would have sued under it,” said Sandra Reiss, a Birmingham lawyer who represents Garrett. “Our situation is deplorable. As you probably know, Alabama is not a leader in civil rights.”

A second plaintiff in the case, Milton Ash, had worked in an Alabama youth facility but suffered from chronic asthma. He asked to be moved to an area where smoking was forbidden, but officials refused. He later sued the state. His claim was also thrown out by Wednesday’s ruling.

The decision dealt only with employment, however. Rehnquist said that the court would leave for another day the question of whether state agencies must still comply with the parts of the law that require public buildings to accommodate disabled people.

The chief justice also said that victims of job discrimination may have other options besides suing individually for damages. He noted that “the United States” could sue the state for damages on their behalf, or victims might seek court orders that call for the discrimination to end, the chief justice said.

But civil rights lawyers say that neither option is a practical remedy for individual workers.

In the earlier decision on the Violence Against Women Act, as well as Wednesday’s ruling, the Rehnquist majority said that Congress does not have the power under the Constitution’s guarantee of “equal protection of the laws” to attack such discrimination.

In a concurring opinion, Kennedy said that state discrimination against the disabled is regrettable but not necessarily unconstitutional.

“The failure of a state to revise policies now seen as incorrect,” he wrote, does not “constitute the purposeful and intentional action required to make out a violation of the equal protection clause.”

This stands in sharp contrast to what the Rehnquist majority said in December in the case of Bush vs. Gore.

There, the five justices who stopped the hand recount sought by Vice President Al Gore said that Florida had violated the equal protection clause because it failed to set specific standards for counting legal ballots. While no one claimed that state officials had deliberately set out to discriminate for some voters and against others, unfairness could result, the majority said.

In Wednesday’s ruling, however, the majority acknowledged that some blind or deaf workers might consider it unfair that they were not hired because of their disability. Nonetheless, Rehnquist said that he saw “no pattern of unconstitutional discrimination” targeted at disabled people.

Once again, the four more-liberal justices dissented, saying that the court should have upheld the law as passed by Congress.

They argued that since the Civil War it has been clear that the federal government has the power to protect civil rights nationwide. And Congress had compiled a voluminous record of discrimination against disabled people before it passed the 1990 law, he said.

By its stingy approach to civil rights, the “court improperly invades a power the Constitution assigns to Congress,” said Justice Stephen G. Breyer. He was joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Disability rights advocates and liberal activists denounced the ruling.

Patricia Yeager, executive director of the California Foundation for Independent Living Centers in Sacramento, said that the court “has dealt a major blow to the ADA.”

Ralph Neas, president of People for the American Way, called the ruling “unconscionable.”

“By once again resurrecting the long-discredited theory of states’ rights, the Supreme Court has denied state employees with disabilities the full protection of our equal employment opportunity laws,” he said.