Future Developments
Eleventh Amendment and the ADA; continued applicability of Title II to states given Garrett?
Discrimination by Category; does the ADA prohibit discrimination between those with different categories of disabilities?
Notes:
- I’d like to conclude with a few possible future developments:
- In their most recent term, the U.S. Supreme Court in Board of Regents of the University of Alabama v. Garrett ruled that Title I of the ADA (dealing with employment discrimination) invalidly abrogated the states’ 11th Amendment immunity against being sued in federal court for money damages.
- Thus, Title I of the ADA was held to not apply to state entity employment practices.
- The Garrett case seems to continue the Rehnquist court’s trend toward restricting federal authority over the states and the reasoning used could be used to restrict the applicability of Title II to the states.
- Another possible future development may be a more explicit judicial recognition of the ADA’s prohibition over discrimination by category.
- This occurs when for example, a public entity discriminates in the provision of services and/or benefits within categories of disabled, rather than in the traditional disabled-nondisabled form of discrimination.
- The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia ruled in Lewis v. Aetna Life Ins. Co that the “ADA prohibits discrimination on the basis of an individual’s particular disability,” regardless of whether “a disabled person is treated differently than a non-disabled person or another disabled person.”
- Thus, in the future, states prisons may have to pay particular attention that services and benefits are administered in a way that does not discriminate between disabilities.