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State Claims Immunity from ADA Lawsuits
Court Debates Eleventh and Fourteenth Amendments
Federal Employment Laws May Be in Question, but State Laws Still
Apply
[Creating HR Policies or Employee Handbook?]
State
employees may be out of luck when it comes to suing under the ADA
and other federal employment laws. Supreme Court decisions have
found that at least three of these laws cannot be applied to state
employers. But, even so, don’t think that state governments have
“carte blanche” to discriminate.
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The Supreme Court disappointed
employee rights advocates once again in its latest decision limiting
Congress’ power to regulate states as employers. According to the
Court’s decision in Board of Trustees of Univ. of Alabama v.
Garrett, No. 99-1240 (2/21/01), states cannot be sued by individuals
under Title I of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). This
decision is the third by the Court in the last two years finding
that federal employment laws cannot be applied to state employers.
This same Court found that employees could not sue states under the
Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) in 1999 or under the Age
Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) in 2000. But make no
mistake: These decisions don’t give public employers a free pass to
discriminate or underpay employees. Even if federal laws do not
apply, states still must comply with their own state employment
laws.
State Claims
Immunity from ADA Lawsuits
The Garrett
case combined two separate ADA suits filed against Alabama state
employers. In the first suit, a registered nurse at the University
of Alabama in Birmingham Hospital claimed that she was regarded as
disabled because of her history of breast cancer. The second case
involved a correctional officer employed by the Alabama Department
of Youth Services who claimed the department did not accommodate his
chronic asthma. The district court combined the cases and ruled
that Congress exceeded its authority by allowing individuals to sue
state employers for monetary damages under the ADA. The Eleventh
Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed and reversed the decision finding
that the ADA was properly applied to states. The Supreme Court
agreed to consider the case to resolve a split among the Circuit
Courts of Appeals. On one hand, the Second, Fifth, Ninth, Tenth,
and Eleventh Circuits determined that individuals may sue a state
for monetary damages in federal court under the ADA; on the other
hand, the Fourth and Eight Circuits found that the Constitution did
not permit such lawsuits.
Court
Debates Eleventh and Fourteenth Amendments
The Court began
its analysis by looking at the Eleventh Amendment of the United
States Constitution, which bans lawsuits against a state by citizens
of another state, and recent decisions by the Court that extend that
prohibition to citizens suing their own state. According to the
Court, “The ultimate guarantee of the Eleventh Amendment is that
nonconsenting States may not be sued by private individuals in
federal court.” However, the Court recognized that this immunity is
not absolute and that Congress may nullify states’ immunity if it
meets two criteria. First, Congress must show that it
“unequivocally” intended to abrogate (or abolish) the immunity.
This criterion was not at issue since Congress included a section to
the ADA (found in 42 U.S.C. §12202) which specifically asserts that
states are not immune under the Eleventh Amendment from actions in
federal or state court for violations of the ADA.
Second, Congress
must have acted “pursuant to a valid grant of constitutional
authority.” In particular, the Court pointed out that the Eleventh
Amendment immunity is “necessarily limited” by the Equal Protection
Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment (prohibiting states from denying
“any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the
laws”). Congress may enforce that clause by enacting “appropriate
legislation.” However, the Court also found that in order to allow
private individuals to sue for monetary damages, Congress must be
able to show a pattern of discrimination by the states that violates
the Equal Protection Clause. In addition, any remedy imposed by
Congress must be “congruent and proportional to the targeted
violation.”
According to the
Court, Congress failed on both of these counts. The Court
determined that the legislative record of the ADA does not show that
Congress identified a pattern of state discrimination against
disabled job applicants or employees. While Congress assembled a
record showing societal discrimination against the disabled, the
Court found that “the great majority of [those] incidents did not
deal with the activities of States.” In addition, even if the Court
could “squeeze out of these examples a pattern of unconstitutional
discrimination by the States,” the extensive rights and remedies
provided by the ADA are not “congruent and proportional to the
targeted violation.” For example, the reasonable accommodation duty
“far exceeds what is constitutionally required in that it makes
unlawful a range of alternate responses that would be reasonable but
would fall short of imposing an ‘undue burden’ upon the [state]
employer.” Based on this analysis, the Court reversed the Eleventh
Circuit to find that individuals cannot sue state employers for
monetary damages under Title I of the ADA.
Federal Employment Laws May Be in Question, but State Laws Still
Apply
This case is the
third Supreme Court decision in the last two years calling into
question the applicability of federal employment laws to states. In
June 1999, the Court in Alden v. Maine, 527 U.S. 706 (1999), found
that the FLSA could not be enforced against states without their
consent. In January 2000, the Court determined in Kimel v. Florida
Bd. of Regents, 528 U.S. 62 (2000), that state employees cannot sue
for monetary damages under the ADEA. And questions about the
enforceability of the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) against
state employers have now arisen in the lower courts. Five federal
Circuit Courts of Appeals (the Second, Third, Fifth, Sixth, and
Eleventh) have found that the FMLA should not apply to state
employers.
So what do
these decisions mean for state employers? You can draw the
following conclusions from the cases:
1.
States cannot be sued by individuals (such as employees) under the
FLSA, ADEA, and Title I of the ADA. Note, however, that Garrett
only dealt with the ADA’s employment provisions; it did not address
Title II (prohibiting state and local governments from
discriminating against the disabled in the provision of services) or
Title III (requiring public accommodations and commercial facilities
to be readily accessible to the disabled).
2. The
decisions are limited only to state governments and their agencies
and do not apply to local governments and counties.
These entities are not protected by the Eleventh
Amendment. Of course, private employers also are not affected.
3. As a
practical matter, state employers still must comply with state wage
and hour and discrimination laws.
Almost
every state has its own laws that protect substantially the same
rights (and in some cases more rights) as the federal FLSA, ADEA,
and ADA that specifically apply to state employers. Thus, state
employees can sue under these laws in state courts.
4.
State employers located in the federal Circuits that have ruled the
FMLA does not now apply do not have to comply with that law.
Thus, state employers located in the Second Circuit (Connecticut,
New York, and Vermont), the Third Circuit (Delaware, New Jersey,
Pennsylvania, and the Virgin Islands), the Fifth Circuit (Louisiana,
Mississippi, and Texas), the Sixth Circuit (Kentucky, Michigan,
Ohio, and Tennessee), and the Eleventh Circuit (Alabama, Florida,
and Georgia) are not covered by the FMLA, but state employers in the
other eight Circuits must comply. As with the FLSA, ADA, and ADEA
decisions, local and county governments are not affected by these
rulings.
Interestingly, in the past Title VII of the Civil Rights Act
(prohibiting discrimination based on race, sex, religion, ethnicity,
and color) has been found to apply to state governments. However,
the Supreme Court has not reviewed that law’s coverage using the
Constitutional arguments applied to these recent decisions. Thus,
there is some possibility that the Title VII issue is ripe for a
challenge using the Supreme Court’s latest findings, although no
cases are currently pending before the Court. |
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Policy Service, Inc.
