O'Connor: Disabilities Act Has Gaps

By ANNE GEARAN
.c The Associated Press


WASHINGTON (AP) - Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor says the high
court's heavy load of disability rights cases is the result of holes in a
1990 landmark civil rights law.

The Americans With Disabilities Act was written and passed hurriedly by
Congress, O'Connor told a lawyers' conference Thursday.

``It's an example of what happens when ... the sponsors are so eager to get
something passed that what passes hasn't been as carefully written as a group
of law professors might put together,'' O'Connor said. ``So it leaves lots of
ambiguities and gaps and things for courts to figure out.''

She said the court's current term probably will be remembered as the
``disabilities act term'' for the number of cases dealing with the civil
rights law. She wrote the unanimous decision in the most significant
disability rights case on the court's docket this term.

In that case, as in all previous cases dealing with disabilities on the job,
the high court narrowed the reach of the ADA. Ruling in the case of an
assembly line worker with carpal tunnel syndrome, O'Connor wrote that medical
conditions that only prevent someone from doing some workplace tasks do not
qualify as a disability under the law.

Two other ADA decisions are expected before the court adjourns in late June.

``Boy, are we trying to figure out some of the disabilities act issues,''
O'Connor told her audience at Georgetown University's law school. ``This act
is one of those that did leave uncertainties in what it was Congress had in
mind.''

The law, passed with overwhelming bipartisan support, forbids discrimination
against the disabled on the job and elsewhere. It is probably best known for
mandating wheelchair ramps and handicapped-equipped bathrooms in public
buildings.

After the court's ruling in the carpal tunnel case, one member of Congress
took strong exception to O'Connor's reading of the law.

``As the congressman who shepherded the legislation through the House of
Representatives, I believe that the 'intent of Congress' was clearly more
expansive than Justice O'Connor's ruling would suggest,'' Rep. Steny Hoyer,
D-Md., wrote in The Washington Post.

Hoyer warned of ``the perils of judicial attempts at retroactive
mind-reading,'' and suggested Congress could amend the law to re-establish
some protections the court has taken away.

O'Connor spoke one day after a second lawmaker lectured the high court for
taking too much power from Congress.

``As someone elected by the citizens of my state to legislate, I am
profoundly troubled by the extent to which the judiciary has abrogated
Congress' powers in the past few years,'' Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., told
Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and a group of federal judges Wednesday.

Schumer, a liberal-leaning legislator frequently at odds with the
conservative tilt of the high court, listed an ADA case among several in
which the Supreme Court has struck down or narrowed laws passed by Congress.

O'Connor also drew loud laughs when she pantomimed the plight of
sweat-drenched lawyers arguing a case before the formidable personalities on
her court.

``Of course the lawyers really don't get to argue - all they get is
interrupted,'' O'Connor said. ``I don't think I would want to be a lawyer
arguing before that court.''

She said the same-day release of an audiotape of oral arguments in the
historic 2000 Bush v. Gore case was a helpful way to educate the public about
the closed ways of the court, and she predicted the court more often may make
such releases.

On the Net:

Justice Department ADA site: http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/ada/adahom1.htm

AP-NY-03-14-02 1444EST

Copyright 2002 The Associated Press.