From the New York Times
ISM
June 23, 1999
Correctable Impairments Should Not Be Considered Disabilities, High Court
Rules
By LINDA GREENHOUSE
WASHINGTON -- 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 vs. 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 vs. United Parcel Service, No. 97-1992, and
Albertson's vs. 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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