Today, I am off to Dallas Texas. While there, I will be doing two different webinars with my colleague and foil Richard Hunt. The webinars can be found here and here. So, this is my blog entry for the week. With respect to next week’s blog entry, absolutely no doubt that it will be blogging on the imminent decision in Kisor v. Wilkie. Also, on the horizon, blogging on some books put out by the American Bar Association related to what I do. This blog entry talks about one of those books.

As everyone knows, Richard and I frequently blog on each other’s cases. Our perspectives are so different that the reader gets the benefit of both. Sometimes, I am in complete agreement. Sometimes, very close to it. Today’s blog entry offers a personal and professional perspective on Richard’s blog entry talking about noisy restaurants. His blog entry can be found here. As everyone knows, I am deaf proud with a small d. What that means is that I have a 65 to 120 dB sensorineural hearing loss in both ears. I function entirely in the hearing world with very advanced powerful hearing aids and top-notch lip reading skills. I am very sensitive to deaf culture and have represented culturally deaf individuals in effective communication cases. If I were deaf with a D, then I would be a person who learned ASL as a first language, went to a state school for the deaf, and is medically deaf. In the capital deaf world, you get a bonus if you are genetically deaf. While I am medically deaf and most probably genetically deaf considering my immediate and extended family’s history of childhood hearing loss, I don’t meet the other two criteria. Hence, the small d.

Richard’s blog entry is all about the noisy restaurant. Recently, an article getting wide play suggested that the ADA should apply to noisy restaurants, and Richard’s blog entry is a follow-up on that. I deal with the noisy restaurant all the time. First, I wear digital hearing aids. As such, they are highly programmable. With the hearing aids I have now, I have two programs on it. First, a program for everyday conversation. Second, a program for noisy restaurant and amplification. In the noisy restaurant and amplification program, if I am in a noisy restaurant, I will select that program and it fades the background noise so that I hear the people immediately around me. It is also excellent for when I am at the theater as it does real well with amplification.

So, what do I do with noisy restaurants? First, I try to avoid them at all costs. You know the noisy restaurants. They’re going to be restaurants with high ceilings, no carpeting, and lots of people. It seems that millennial’s and younger folks thrive on this kind of vibe. If I do go into a restaurant and it gets noisy, I use my noisy restaurant program. For anyone using digital aids, they often come with several different programs. I would strongly encourage a program for noisy restaurants. It really is a tremendous help. Sometimes, like the restaurant I went to recently for professional networking lunch, even the noisy restaurant program is not much help. In that case, I tough it out, and then strongly consider whether I want to go back as being in that kind of environment puts me at a severe disadvantage.

Turning to Richard’s legal analysis, it is superb as usual. First, I personally don’t like the word “disabled.” I find that word disabling. Disability to me is more neutral. That said, my preference for disability seems like a battle I am losing. At any rate, go people first and then try to figure out what the individual prefers. Second, the hearing loss community can’t stand “hearing impaired,” though I do know of individuals with hearing loss using it. You are much better off going with deaf or hard of hearing, whichever is the case. There is nothing impaired about my hearing. I just don’t hear without my hearing aids.

I agree with Richard that a hearing loss is a physical impairment. I also agree that the inability to hear when compared to most people in the general population is a substantial limitation on a major life activity. Finally, I agree that the inability to understand the conversation in a specialized environment like a noisy restaurant is not a substantial limitation on the major life activity because conversing in noisy places is not a major life activity.

I also agree with Richard that a noisy restaurant is not discrimination because everyone has to endure it. That said, if a person with a hearing loss goes to a noisy restaurant, the restaurant would have to adjust with respect to the patron partaking in the essential eligibility requirements of the restaurant. For example, if the patron simply can’t understand the server, adjustments will need to be made so that the server and the patron can communicate to get the order. I also agree with Richard that design and construction are not policies, practices, or procedures and that the ADAAG has nothing to do with noise in the facility.

With respect to background music, even with my hearing aids, I still have a 40% hearing loss. I don’t always hear the background music, especially if my noisy restaurant program is on. Oftentimes, I will hear it only in the background. If my wife or my daughter says that is a really cool song, I will whip out shazam to figure out what it is. So, in my case background music is not much of an issue. I do understand how background noise could be an issue, especially for those without a noisy restaurant program on their hearing aids.

In the nut allergy blog entry, here, we talked about what might be the essential eligibility requirements of a restaurant. As Richard points out and as I pointed out in that blog entry, it isn’t always clear what the essential eligibility requirements of a restaurant are. A noisy restaurant is part of the restaurant’s vibe and therefore, essentially part of the facility. Playing with the music volume arguably fundamentally interferes with the vibe of the restaurant.

Richard does raise the point of closed captioning and here is also something I have personally dealt with. I do recall walking into a restaurant once and asking the restaurant to turn on captioning on the TV. They refused saying that it bothered their patrons. On this, IMO, the restaurant blew it. As a deaf individual functioning in the hearing world who relies on captioning whenever I watch TV, the captioning should have been turned on. There is no way they could say that providing that auxiliary aid and service would fundamentally alter the essential eligibility requirements associated with the restaurant. Also, what I see more often now, is that the televisions in the restaurant all have the sound off and the captioning on. The reasoning being is that way the patron can understand what is going on and the noise from the TV doesn’t interfere with patrons trying to hear each other; a case of universal design benefiting everyone.

Finally, while I am at it, since I have a blog, I am able to get books from the American Bar Association for free if it is related to what I cover in my blog, and I can find a way to post a review of the books on the blog when appropriate. Recently, I have received two books from the American Bar Association. The Model Rules of Professional Conduct and the Class Action Strategy and Practice Guide. I am going to save the Model Rules of Professional Conduct for another blog entry. I do want to briefly talk about the book, Class Action Strategy and Practice Guide, by Gregory Cook and Jocelyn Larkin editors from the ABA’s litigation section. I do write about class action quite a bit, such as here. However, I am not a person that spearheads litigation. So, I was very interested in this book to find out why an attorney would undertake a class action in the first place and what are the considerations that go along with it. If you are trying to get a handle on just what is class action litigation, the first few chapters do a great job talking about the considerations for deciding whether to take on a class action. After that, the book gets into the serious weeds of class action litigation. On the one hand, it is really nice how it does with that because it has both the plaintiff and the defense perspective. On the other hand, if you are not a person doing class action litigation, much of the succeeding chapters may well go over your head. In short, if you are a class action litigator or are seriously considering pursuing class action litigation or find yourself in a class action as an attorney, I would definitely recommend the book.

 

Be back next week with Kisor v. Wilkie.

 

Some weeks are a bit of a struggle trying to figure out what to blog on. Law360 is a tremendous help. Also, I keep a pipeline of cases as well. However, sometimes I’m just not in the mood to blog on what is in my pipeline. So, I looked at all of my law 360 alerts and lo and behold Karnoski v. Trump came down from the Ninth Circuit. My daughter and I teach at our synagogue during the school year. Our synagogue, Congregation  Bet Haverim, was originally founded as the home for gay and lesbian Jews in Decatur Georgia. Since then, it has also become a welcoming place for the heterosexual community as well. It is a reconstructionist synagogue. Reconstructionism (think reform with a strong sense of community), is an offshoot of the conservative Jewish movement. So, while our liturgy would be very familiar to any Jewish person in the conservative movement, our synagogue is very big on social justice. That said, it is also very interested in a big tent where everyone is welcome, and the rabbi takes that very seriously. So, when I teach at the religious school during the year, I am constantly weaving in case law into my classes. Of course, considering our synagogue’s history and my own professional and personal background, we talk quite a bit about disability discrimination and LGBT as they get analyzed in the courts. We actually talked about our case of the day in my class last year (I teach the seventh grade). Our case of the day is Karnoski v. Trump, opinion can be found here, the Ninth Circuit’s recent decision of June 14, 2019, discussing the military ban on transgender individuals with gender dysphoria. As everyone knows, I follow this area closely because gender dysphoria is a disability under the ADA, and I have always been interested in just how the equal protection clause will be interpreted with respect to the LGBT community when compared to the disability community. As usual, the blog entry is divided into categories and they are: introduction; court’s reasoning equal protection; court’s reasoning executive privilege; court’s reasoning deliberative process privilege; and thoughts/takeaways. Of course, the reader is free to focus on any or all of the categories.

I

Introduction

 

The opinion is fascinating in a couple of different ways. First, it is a published decision without an author, i.e. a per curiam opinion. You don’t see a lot of published decisions without an author. Second, the decision is unanimous. Third, the decision goes 58 pages, but fully 38 pages of that decision is spent detailing the procedural history of the case. Turning to the facts, I am not going to go into 38 pages of facts. Basically, before President Obama left office, he encouraged the Secretary of Defense to study whether transgender individuals should serve in the military. The result of those efforts was a decision that they should. However, President Trump was none too pleased with that. Accordingly, he tweeted that transgender individuals were not going to serve in the military. That led to implementation of the ban and to lawsuits. The lawsuits basically said that the military didn’t do its due diligence and so therefore, the ban should be thrown out. As a result of those lawsuits, the military went through the process of studying the matter, and a report was issued talking about when transgender individuals and those with gender dysphoria could serve or not. That led to more lawsuits including discovery disputes over how the process evolved and what went into the process of coming up with the final report. The District Court did not give the administration much of a choice but to declare executive privilege and deliberative privileges with respect to the discovery disputes. Also, the District Court held that transgender individuals were in a suspect or quasi-suspect class for equal protection purposes. Accordingly, all of that gets appealed to the Ninth Circuit.

 

II

Court’s Reasoning: Equal Protection

  1. Citing to a Supreme Court decision, the Ninth Circuit said that when it comes to equal protection classifications based on gender, the level of justification is “exceedingly persuasive.” That is, the justification has to be genuine and not hypothesized or invented in response to litigation and must not rely on overbroad generalizations about the different talents, capacity, or preferences of males and females. Also, physical differences between the sexes should not be used to denigrate either sex. In short, the Supreme Court requires something more than rational basis review but does not require strict scrutiny.
  2. With respect to judicial scrutiny of a military decision based on sexual orientation, the Ninth Circuit has previously said that the government has to advance an important governmental interest, the intrusion must significantly further that interest, and the intrusion must be necessary to further that interest. In other words, is a less intrusive means unlikely to achieve substantially the government’s interest.
  3. Citing to city of Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Center, Inc., 473 U.S. 432 (1985), the heightened scrutiny must be applied to the specific circumstances rather than just generally.
  4. So, while the military is entitled some deference, that doesn’t mean intermediate scrutiny goes away.
  5. In applying intermediate scrutiny on remand, the District Court does not get to substitute its own evaluation of evidence for a reasonable evaluation by the military. However, that deference doesn’t mean just accepting the military’s point of view at face value. The military bears the burden of establishing that they reasonably determined the policy significantly furthers the government’s important interest, and that is not a trivial matter.

III

Court’s Reasoning: Executive Privilege

  1. The presidential communication privilege is a presumptive privilege for presidential communications that preserves the president’s ability to obtain candid informed opinion from his advisors and to make decisions confidentially. Accordingly, that privilege protects communication directly involving and documents actually viewed by the president as well as documents solicited and received by the president or his immediate White House advisors with broad and significant responsibility for investigating and formulating advice given to the president. That privilege covers documents reflecting presidential decision-making and deliberations regardless of whether the documents are predecisional or not and it covers the documents in their entirety.
  2. The deliberative process privilege is something else entirely. That privilege protects document reflecting advisory opinions, recommendations, and deliberation comprising part of the process by which governmental decisions and policies are formulated. For that privilege to apply, material has to be predecisional and deliberative. That privilege also does not protect documents in their entirety. If the government can segregate and disclose nonprivileged factual information within a document, it has to do so.
  3. Since the plaintiff’s have a meritorious argument that the 2018 policy did not independently analyze the impact of transgender individuals serving in the armed services, but rather implemented the 2017 memorandum, both forms of executive privilege are at issue here.
  4. Executive privilege is an extraordinary assertion of power that should not be lightly invoked because it sets up an immediate confrontation between two branches of government. Accordingly, when dealing with a dispute over whether subpoenas are unnecessarily broad, that conflict should be avoided whenever possible. In that situation, courts are urged to explore other avenues short of forcing the executive to invoke the privilege.
  5. A president does not have to assert the presidential communication privilege to specific documents covered by discovery requests before lodging a separation of powers objection.
  6. On remand, while the District Court should give due deference to the presidential communication privilege, the District Court also needs to realize that that deference is not absolute.
  7. In an executive privilege situation, plaintiffs have to make a preliminary showing of demonstrating that the evidence sought is directly relevant to issues expected to be central to the trial and is not available with due diligence elsewhere. If the plaintiff shows that the discovery requests are narrowly tailored to seek evidence directly relevant to the central issues in the litigation and that evidence is not available with due diligence elsewhere, plaintiffs meet their preliminary burden. Once that burden is met, then the president gets the opportunity to formally invoke the privilege and make very specific objection to show that the interest in secrecy or nondisclosure outweighs the need for responsive materials. Then, it is up to the District Court to conduct an in camera review before any materials are turned over to the plaintiff’s so that nonrelevant material can be taken out and so that presidential confidentiality is not unnecessarily breached.

IV

Court’s Reasoning: Deliberative Process Privilege

  1. A plaintiff can obtain deliberative materials upon a showing of a need for the materials and that the need for accurate fact-finding overrides the government’s interest in nondisclosure. Whether the exception applies involves looking at: 1) the relevance of the evidence; 2) the availability of other evidence; 3) the government’s role in the litigation; and 4) the extent to which disclosure hinders frank and independent discussion regarding contemplative policies and decisions.
  2. The record is not adequate to evaluate the relevance of all the requested information in terms of balancing production of materials against the military’s confidentiality interest. Also, the District Court needs to carefully consider the military’s interest in full and frank communications about policymaking. One way to deal with all of this is for the District Court to conduct discovery in stages. After all, documents involving the most senior executive branch officials may require greater deference than other kinds of documents, though of course, those documents may be the most relevant as well.

V

Thoughts and Takeaways

  1. I feel sorry for the District Court when it comes to dealing with this case on remand. What the District Court is supposed to do is far from clear. We do know the Ninth Circuit believes transgender individuals are not in the rational basis class, but what class are they in? The Ninth Circuit opinion is really confusing because it specifically refers to “intermediate scrutiny,” but it also cite to the Cleburne decision. The two aren’t the same. Intermediate scrutiny is what we think of with respect to what Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg established in her advocacy before the Supreme Court when she was a practicing attorney. Cleburne is another animal entirely. Ostensibly, Cleburne was a rational basis case. However, Justice Marshall in that decision noted that it would be more accurate to call Cleburne a rational basis plus decision. To my mind, rational basis plus is a step below intermediate scrutiny. Being the former professor that I am, I would analogize it to rational basis scrutiny being a C, rational basis plus being a C+/B-, intermediate scrutiny being a B, and suspect class being an A. I don’t see how you can say that Cleburne and the intermediate scrutiny cases are the same equal protection classification.
  2. While the military gets deference, that deference is not absolute. However, as with the equal protection classification, it is very unclear just where the deference ends and judicial checks begin.
  3. The court makes it clear that the District Court is supposed to do everything in its power to prevent claims of executive privilege and deliberative process privileges.
  4. If those claims cannot be prevented, then executive and deliberative process privileges need to be respected but that respect is also not absolute. Again, unclear.
  5. It is revolutionary that transgender individuals are being put in a class higher than rational basis (the LGBT Supreme Court decisions all stayed away from equal protection classifications in their decision. Instead they focused on other concepts, such as liberty and due process). It will be interesting to see whether this holds. If it holds that transgender individuals are in a class higher than rational basis, that decision could have broad ramifications beyond just the question of whether a transgender individual has a right to serve. It also means that transgender individuals will in at least some cases, be in a higher equal protection class than individuals with disabilities (under Tennessee v. Lane, the equal protection class for people with disability varies depending upon the circumstances of the case).
  6. The Ninth Circuit is essentially holding that discrimination against a transgender individual is sex discrimination, a point the Supreme Court has never considered but will do so next year. One wonders how that also will impact on this.
  7. For those trying to keep track of all the privilege claim that President Trump is currently making, this case is a nice introduction to the executive and deliberative process privileges.

I know it has been awhile since I did a blog entry, but I have a really good excuse. The last day of May was my daughter’s last day of her freshman year in high school. Then, the following week dealt with chasing her around and also going to Portland Maine for the ABA Law Practice convention. Beautiful country up there. Then, when I came back, I had to make sure that my daughter had everything she needed and was all packed to go off to overnight camp for four weeks in the Georgia mountains. It is her second year there, and so we are optimistic that she will have an even better time than last year, and she liked it a lot last year. I got her off the camp yesterday morning. So, my wife and I are now empty-nesters for the next four weeks.

Today’s blog entry is a twofer. That is, one Department of Transportation letter and one case. In both cases, the plaintiffs were represented by Mary Vargas of the law firm Stein and Vargas. Full disclosure: I refer probably three cases a month to Mary. She and her firm do fabulous work, and it is not unusual for me to blog on her cases. Also, with respect to the case that we are going to discuss, my colleague Richard Hunt, beat me to it here. Richard’s blog entries are always provocative. He and I are going to be presenting on two different webinars in Dallas, Texas, on June 26 and June 27. The difference in our perspectives should make for a very lively webinar. The two webinars will discuss the whole deal with service animals and emotional support animals under federal laws and separately, the wild west of Internet accessibility litigation. With respect to signing up for the first seminar dealing with animals under federal laws, you can do so here if you are a member of the Federal Bar Association and here if you are not. As usual, the blog entry is provided into categories and they are: DOT letter facts and holding; DOT letter takeaways; JD v. Colonial Williamsburg foundation introduction and facts; majority reasoning vacating summary judgment and remanding case for further proceedings; dissenting opinion; and thought/takeaways. Of course, the reader is free to focus on any or all of the categories. This blog entry is unusual in that you might get away with respect to the JD v. Colonial Williamsburg sections of the blog entry just reading the facts and the takeaways. I don’t recommend it, but it’s possible as the thought/takeaways section evolved into something rather different this time.

I

DOT Letter Facts and Holding

May 21, 2019 letter from the General Counsel’s office of the US Department of Transportation involving American airlines and a person with severe peanut allergies.

This matter involved a seven-year-old girl with a severe allergy to peanuts, tree nuts and seeds and at risk of anaphylactic shock if she is exposed to or ingests these allergens. Accordingly, upon arrival at the airport to take an American Airlines flight, her father identified her daughter’s severe food allergy to an agent and requested pre-boarding in order to wipe down their assigned seats and tray tables. The American Airlines agent refused the request to pre-board. Also, it was alleged that the agent became hostile when the family identified the disability as a food allergy. A similar set of occurrences occurred in advance of the return flight from Charlotte to Portland.

American Airlines asserted that unlike some carriers, it doesn’t serve peanuts. However, it does serve other nut products. While the airline cleans its aircraft regularly, those cleanings are not designed to ensure the removal of nut allergens nor is its air filtration system designed to ensure the removal of nut allergens. Finally, American Airlines indicated that other customers can bring peanuts or tree nuts on board. Subsequent to the complaint being filed with the Department of Transportation, American Airlines amended its pre-boarding policy to allow pre-boarding for nut allergies effective December 2018.

Based upon the above facts, the Department of Transportation concluded that passengers with severe nut allergies are passengers with disabilities for purposes of the Air Carrier Access Act. Further, when a passenger with a severe allergy asks for pre-boarding to wipe down seating surfaces, that passenger is requesting additional time to be seated because from the passenger’s perspective, the seating area cannot be safely access unless totally wiped down. Accordingly, the Department of Transportation believes that when an airline fails to allow passengers with severe nut allergies to pre-board to wipe down seating services, 14 C.F.R. §382.93 is violated, and therefore, American Airlines gets a warning from the Department of Transportation.

II

DOT Letter Takeaways

  1. 14 C.F.R. §382.93 requires carriers to offer pre-boarding to passengers with a disability who self-identify at the gate as needing additional time or assistance to board, store accessibility equipment, or be seated. Department of Transportation is going on record here that nut allergies are a disability.
  2. Since Delta basically owns Atlanta, has 80% of the gates I have read, Delta is pretty much the option for flying out of Atlanta. Southwest does have a hub here, but I can never get used to the cattle call on Southwest. Also, I have always enjoyed the Delta experience. That said, I know Southwest has a lot of fans out there. What I am trying to say is that Delta is one of those airlines offering nuts on its flights. I happen to love nuts, and they can be healthy too. In fact, just last week, on my way to and back from Portland, Maine, I had almonds as my snack with my usual tomato juice on ice. It would be hard to say how many people on Delta choose nuts for their snack. It would make sense that this family would choose an airline not offering nuts. I suppose this family would have to fly as a group to ensure that a person sitting next to their daughter does not eat nuts. Apparently, the aircraft filtration system works for the daughter so long as her area is wiped down. That may or may not be true for everyone.
  3. The Air Carrier Access Act, as we have discussed here, contains no private cause of action. So, it is remarkable that an attorney of Mary’s stature took on the filing of a matter with the Department of Transportation.

III

J.D. v. Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Introduction and Facts

As I mentioned above, I was first alerted to this case by Richard Hunt’s blog entry on it. I know Richard quite well. His blog entries are always very thought-provoking. He is also extremely knowledgeable about title III of the ADA and the Fair Housing Act as well. He and I communicate regularly. It also is not unusual for he and I to discuss the same cases since our perspectives are so different from each other. The particular blog entry where he discussed this case was so thought-provoking that I had people encouraging me to write my own blog entry on this. Finally, I have warned Mary that this blog entry may not go precisely as she would like, and she was okay with that. Even so, this blog entry has a different take on the case from Richard’s. I do hope you can join us for our webinars in a couple of weeks. I have never actually met Richard in person, and I am looking forward to doing so.

Facts:

JD is an 11-year-old boy suffering from several health problems and experiences a host of symptoms whenever he ingests gluten. Those symptoms include: significant constipation; abdominal pain; foot pain; numbness; cognitive impairment; elevated liver enzymes; and temporary loss of consciousness. The diagnosis is either celiac disease or non-celiac gluten sensitivity. For such a condition, the only medically accepted treatment is a strict gluten-free diet, and JD’s physician is of the opinion that a gluten-free diet is medically necessary for JD. Further, JD’s parent testified that his health significantly approved once he is on a strict gluten-free diet. However, whenever he accidentally ingests gluten even in trace amounts, the symptoms come crashing back. Accordingly, JD’s parents regularly prepare his food and use separate tableware to ensure that he can participate in school parties, celebrations, and meals to the greatest extent possible. Although there are some restaurant his parents do trust, in general, they no longer eat out as a family due to the risk of gluten exposure.

The school went on a field trip to Colonial Williamsburg. That trip included dinner at Shields Tavern. The restaurant has a policy against allowing outside food into its restaurant subject to two exceptions: 1) parents can bring baby food or snacks for infants and toddlers; and 2) patrons may bring cakes and wine for a band subject to a plating and corkage fee. Shields Tavern also appears to allow outside food at the discretion of the manager (emphasis mine).

Months before the trip, JD’s father informed the school that he and JD wouldn’t be eating at any of the restaurants but instead would bring their own food. However, nothing in the record suggested that the school relayed that message to the restaurant. In fact, an invoice from Colonial Williamsburg showed that the school placed an order for two gluten-free meals at Shields Tavern. The parties disputed whether those meals were intended for JD and his father.

When JD and his father arrived at the restaurant, they sat down at a two-person table. The father informed a server not to bring out any food for them. He then unpacked a cooler filled with plates, cups, and utensils, and began making a gluten-free chicken sandwich. Another server told JD’s father that he couldn’t bring in outside food because it would violate the health code. The father then asked to speak to the manager, who confirmed the policy, and insisted that they would have to eat their food outside. The head chef soon arrived and offered to prepare a gluten-free meal for JD.

The Virginia Health Code prohibits food prepared in a private home from being used or offered for human consumption in a food establishment unless the home kitchen is inspected and regulated by the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. That code also requires that food that is unsafe or contaminated must be rendered unusable and discarded.

According to Colonial Williamsburg, the head chef had already prepared the gluten-free meals based on the order placed by the school. JD’s father testified that the meals were not yet prepared and that the head chef offered to prepare them on the spot. The father alleged that he did not trust the tavern to be able to prepare gluten-free meals after preparing fried chicken meals for the other guests. The court said that the District Court properly viewed these facts in the light most favorable to JD.

IV

Majority’s Reasoning Vacating the District Court’s Grant of Summary Judgment and Remanding the Case for Further Proceedings

  1. The ADA was enacted to remedy widespread discrimination against people with disabilities and to provide clear, strong, consistent and enforceable standards addressing such discrimination.
  2. Title III provides that no individual can be discriminated on the basis of disability in the equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, or accommodations of any place of public accommodation.
  3. Prevailing under title III of the ADA means a plaintiff has to show: 1) he is a person with a disability within the meaning of the ADA; 2) the defendant owns, leases, or operates a place of public accommodation; and 3) the defendant discriminated against him because of his disability.
  4. The parties did not dispute that Shields Tavern was a place of public accommodation. They did dispute whether JD was disabled and whether he was discriminated against because of his disability.
  5. The ADA defines a disability as a physical or mental impairment substantially limiting one or more major life activities. Eating is a major life activity.
  6. Viewing the facts in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, the district court correctly believed that JD’s impairment qualified as a disability under the ADA.
  7. Any time you consider whether an impairment substantially limits an individual in a major life activity, that has to be looked at broadly in favor of expansive coverage. That approach is consistent with the purpose of the amendments to the ADA. Finally, the amendment to the ADA make clear that whether a major life activity is substantially limited has to be decided without regards to any mitigating measures, including learned behavioral modifications.
  8. JD submitted extensive evidence about the serious consequences to his health when he ingests gluten.
  9. While no one can eat whatever he or she desires without experiencing some negative health effect, persons with disabilities who have a disability due to severe dietary restrictions must be allowed to enjoy the protections of the ADA. Unlike a person with simple diet restrictions, JD must monitor everything he eats and there is no margin for error. Accordingly, the District Court correctly determined that a genuine dispute of material fact existed as to whether JD was disabled within the meaning of the ADA.
  10. 42 U.S.C. §12182 is the failure to accommodate provisions of title III of the ADA. That particular provision requires a place of public accommodation to make reasonable modifications in policies, practices, or procedures, when such modifications are necessary to afford such goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, or accommodation to individuals with disabilities in the absence of a fundamental alteration.
  11. Proving up a claim under 42 U.S.C. §12182 involves showing: 1) whether the requested modification is necessary for the individual with a disability; 2) whether it is reasonable; and 3) whether it would fundamentally alter the nature of the public accommodation. For each element, the ADA requires an individualized inquiry based upon the particular circumstances of that case.
  12. In determining whether a modification is necessary, the Fourth Circuit uses a like experience standard. That is, you start by considering how the facility is used by persons without disabilities and then consider what are the necessary and reasonable steps to provide guests with disabilities with a like experience.
  13. The District Court erred by not drawing the factual inferences stemming from JD’s history of repeatedly getting sick when eating purportedly gluten-free meals prepared by commercial kitchens, which he says shows that he was at a significant risk had they accepted the gluten-free meal offered by the restaurant.
  14. In a footnote, the court could not see how sitting at a restaurant and not eating would have provided JD a like experience to the people without disabilities.
  15. The necessary inquiry requires an individualized inquiry into the plaintiff’s capacity. Here, the evidence showed that JD repeatedly became sick when exposed to gluten at restaurants and that happened despite his parents best effort to ensure gluten-free meals.
  16. While it is true that the restaurant averred that rigorous protocols existed for preparing gluten-free needles and that a jury might well reject JD’s evidence about the severity of his gluten intolerance and find that the restaurant’s protocols were sufficient to account for his disability, JD did put forth enough evidence to raise a genuine dispute of material fact as to whether that accommodation sufficiently accounted for his disability. So, the District Court’s granting of summary judgment that the accommodation proposed was not necessary must be overturned.
  17. Whether an accommodation is reasonable is a fact specific inquiry looking to whether modification is reasonable under the circumstances. One of the things to think about is whether the cost of the accommodation does not clearly exceed its benefits.
  18. JD pointed out that the restaurant allows parent to bring in outside food for toddlers and infants. The record also shows that two weeks after the events in this case, the restaurant granted a similar accommodation to a child visiting a different one of its restaurants. In that situation, the restaurant was notified before the child’s visit of severe allergies and Colonial Williamsburg determined that it could not accommodate him. So, it allowed the child to eat a homemade meal in the restaurant. The fact that Colonial Williamsburg granted a similar request speaks directly to the reasonableness of JD’s request.
  19. Colonial Williamsburg’s argument that advanced notice is required makes no sense. Nothing in title III of the ADA or the implementing regulations mandate prior notice at a place of public accommodation. In fact, the regulations emphasized that advanced notice requirement are generally undesirable and should only be used when necessary to ensure the accommodation can be made.
  20. In this situation, advanced notice wasn’t necessary because JD was not asking the restaurant to take any action or provide any additional services. Further, the restaurant allows outside food for toddlers and infants without prior notice.
  21. With respect to the state health code provision, Virginia case law has never interpreted the provision. The Fourth Circuit believed that the provision was actually vague because while the provision does prohibit restaurants from serving food prepared in a private home, that provision doesn’t necessarily prohibit customers from bringing in outside food.
  22. While a place of public accommodation can impose legitimate safety requirements necessary for safe operation per 28 C.F.R. §36.301(b), those safety requirement don’t always override a reasonable modification request. Further, it is not even clear here whether JD’s request posed a safety concern in the first place since there is no evidence of the risk of contamination from JD’s meal and the restaurant permits guest to bring outside food in other circumstances.
  23. The defendant bears the burden of proof when it comes to fundamental alteration, and the Fourth Circuit holds that a genuine issue of material fact exists here as well.
  24. A fundamental alteration is anything that is a modification to an essential aspect of the place of public accommodation’s program.
  25. Food service is an essential aspect of the restaurant.
  26. No evidence exists that Colonial Williamsburg has been deluged with request from people seeking to bring in outside food to the extent that it could not give individualized attention to the handful of requests that it might receive.

V

Dissenting Opinion by Judge Wilkinson

  1. Judge Wilkinson also refers to 42 U.S.C. §12182(b)(2)(A)(ii), title III failure to accommodate provisions with respect to policy, practices, and procedures.
  2. He also agrees with the three-part inquiry for handling cases under this regulation.
  3. Necessity is determined with respect to the person with a disability ability to obtain full and equal enjoyment of the place of public accommodation. That means the ADA requires a customer with a disability to have an experience that is as equal as possible.
  4. As long as a guest with a disability has meaningful access to a place of public accommodation, the ADA’s requirements are satisfied.
  5. The availability of the restaurant’s gluten-free meal allowed JD meaningful access to the restaurant offering and renders the modification sought by JD unnecessary.
  6. When JD arrived at the restaurant on a class trip, the head chef, Anthony Zurowski, offered to personally make and serve JD a gluten-free meal. Had JD accepted the offer, he would have been able to sit with his classmates inside the tavern and enjoy its educational offering alongside them. Instead, JD decided to eat a meal prepared at home. He was asked by the restaurant to do that at some nearby picnic tables. After finishing his home prepared meal, JD rejoined his classmates in the tavern for the remainder of their time there.
  7. JD’s own expert testified that the meal offered by the head chef would have been gluten-free. Also, no dispute existed that the head chef had extensive training as a chef, including one-on-one training from Colonial Williamsburg’s head chef specifically focused on gluten-free meal preparation. Therefore, the head chef: knew how to ensure that JD’s gluten-free meal was not contaminated by any trace amounts of gluten; knew how to use a separate designated area to prepare the meal; knew how to sanitize the area and his utensils beforehand; knew how to use a fresh set of gloves and aprons; and knew to use a separate oven. Further, once the meal left the kitchen, no dispute existed that the restaurant’s procedures required that JD’s meal be labeled gluten-free and that the food be specially covered with a meal lit to avoid cross-contamination. Other facts include: the restaurant had extensive experience preparing gluten-free meals for patrons with disability similar to JD’s; over the past five years, the head chef had prepared roughly 4 to 5 gluten-free meals a day for a total of over 5000 meals without ever receiving a single complaint that the meals actually contain gluten; and JD’s father even admitted he had no reason not to trust the tavern’s kitchen staff.
  8. If JD had accepted the restaurant’s genuine offer of a gluten-free meal, he would have had a virtually identical experience to that of his classmates.
  9. The ADA does not require places of public accommodation to provide the precise modification requested by an individual with a disability. Instead, the ADA allows places of public accommodations the freedom to decide how to best provide meaningful access to patrons with disabilities.
  10. Reasonableness must be evaluated with respect to the disruption of the restaurant’s business and the threat to safety occasioned by the modification. A policy allowing patrons to consume home prepared meals inside the restaurant with no advance notice affects a significant disruption on the restaurant’s business.
  11. Allowing patrons to ignore the restaurant’s menu disrupts business. It would let people bring in their own meals, occupy the restaurant’s tables, and take time and attention of the servers, and otherwise divert resources from paying customers all without ever purchasing food from the restaurant itself. Such a policy denies the restaurant much needed revenue in an industry that is notoriously low margin. It also denies the servers gratuities they rely on to make ends meet as tips are usually calculated based upon the cost of the food ordered from the restaurant. Such disruptions are in no way mandated by the ADA.
  12. Allowing patrons to consume home prepared meals opens the gate to all manners of cuisines without any respect for the restaurant’s historical theme. People can bring in food utterly inconsistent with the atmosphere provided by the restaurant. The smell of the food or even its appearance might spoil and undercut the experience for paying customers.
  13. Food brought from home may pose a safety hazard to the restaurant’s other customers. The presence of outside food in the restaurant also increases the risk of provoking food allergies and sensitivities in other patrons.
  14. The proposed modification is unreasonable because it imposes a vague and unmanageable standard on restaurants everywhere. Under the majority rule, a patron requests to be allowed to eat outside food will sometime be reasonable and other times not, thereby, putting managers in the middle of a crazy line drawing exercise without any defined criteria for them to apply. Under the majority rule, advanced notice is not even required. Therefore, restaurant managers would have to evaluate any disruption in the safety hazard of the customer’s outside meal on the fly with the specter of litigation overhead. Finally, under the majority rule, even restaurants that have made intense efforts to prepare gluten-free meals are strung up for liability. Such a rule could only be dreamed up in the judicial monastery.
  15. While it is possible that Colonial Williamsburg may well prevail at trial, the majority reasoning has the flavor of a de facto per se rule. That is, restaurants must either allow patrons to consume food prepared outside the premises or they must justify that refusal at a costly trial.

VI

Thoughts and Takeaways:

  1. What is really going on here and how did we get here? In my opinion, what is really lurking here, is that title III of the ADA contains no specific requirements of an interactive process. If title III of the ADA contained an interactive process requirement, then you could argue that the restaurant and JD’s family had the obligation to engage in an interactive process. Such an interactive process may have included the chef specifically explaining and even showing JD and his family just how the gluten-free meal would be prepared and where it would be prepared. I don’t see why the family would necessarily have to enter the kitchen to do that. Even so, perhaps the restaurant could have taken the same health precautions that their cooks take prior to entering the cooking area so that they could see how the gluten-free meal would be prepared.
  2. If an interactive process was required by title III, then if the restaurant specifically showed JD and his family how the gluten-free meal would be prepared and all the precautions they took, and the family nevertheless walked away from the accommodation, then you could say that the family blew up the interactive process. Under title I of the ADA and case law interpreting the interactive process, the party blowing up the interactive process bears the consequences.
  3. Arguing that an interactive process applies to title III is not a stretch. There are cases interpreting title II holding the interactive process applies to title II. After all, how can you come up with a reasonable modification if you don’t engage in an interactive process?
  4. The other problem here is that title III has no explicit provisions for a person with a disability being otherwise qualified/qualified. If title III had such explicit provisions, then you would look to the essential eligibility requirements of the business and try to determine whether a reasonable accommodation makes any sense. It isn’t a stretch to find an otherwise qualified requirement in title III because how can you figure out if a fundamental alteration exists without knowing the essential eligibility requirements of the business? Judge Wilkinson essentially takes this approach in his dissent. In fact, the majority and the dissent disagree on just what is the essential eligibility requirement at issue. The majority view is that the essential eligibility requirement is eating in the restaurant. However, the dissent’s view is that the essential eligibility requirement is eating food prepared by the restaurant. You get to different places depending upon how you characterize the essential eligibility requirement.
  5. The ADA requires an individualized analysis based upon the particular circumstances of the case. The history that JD and his family had with other restaurants is historical, but shouldn’t be the deciding factor with respect to the particular restaurant. The key should be just what are the individual facts found in this situation. Again, importing essential eligibility requirements from title II and the interactive process from title I would solve a lot of his confusion.
  6. Is there a title II case against the school? The parents notified the school that they needed a gluten-free meal. The school then may or may not have relayed the message to the restaurant. Since the essential eligibility requirements of the field trip was going to Colonial Williamsburg and having lunch at the restaurant, an argument exists that the school may have violated its title II obligations. I also don’t think that the plaintiff would have to exhaust administrative remedies either in an action against the school system given the case we discussed here.
  7. I agree with the majority that the Virginia Health Code prohibiting food prepared in a private home from being used or offered for human consumption in a restaurant is vague.
  8. If you are a restaurant and a person shows up with home food because of a gluten-free allergy situation, it would be a really good idea to engage in an extensive interactive process with the family to see if there is some way the restaurant can serve food to the family. It would also be a good idea for a restaurant that does prepare gluten-free meals for its customers to have rigorous protocols for doing so and to be able to explain and demonstrate them if need be.
  9. I find the like experience standard a bit unwieldy. The problem with the like experience standard is that it most likely involves a person without a disability, a judge, trying to compare that experience to the experience of people with disabilities. That, is a very difficult task indeed.
  10. The restaurant ran itself into a problem with its policy of allowing parents to bring in outside food for toddlers and infants. It ran itself into a bigger problem when Colonial Williamsburg granted a similar accommodation to a child visiting another of its restaurants. Moral of the story here: training, training, training, and more training is necessary across all of a company’s restaurants. Further, everybody should receive the same high quality training and the restaurant needs to be monitored to ensure that they are doing it right.
  11. As a person with a disability, I get the whole advanced notice debate. I want to be able to show up anywhere I want without advanced notice and be accommodated. For example, I expect restaurant, movie theaters, and entertainment venues to have what I need if I just want to show up on the spur of the moment. On the other hand, sometimes it is more complicated than that. For example, as a consultant, I do some traveling. It is a real pain in the tuchas, but after making my hotel reservation at the hotel’s central reservation booking system and asking for a room for persons with disabilities, I always call the hotel directly and have an elaborate conversation with them about what it means to accommodate a deaf patron in the hotel room. If I don’t have that extensive conversation with the hotel itself, no way are the accommodations put in place when I walk into the room. Even if I have that conversation, it is anybody’s guess as to whether the room will accommodate me once I get there.
  12. Another thing missing from this case, is the concept of direct threat, which we discussed here. Both the majority opinion and the dissenting opinion talk about safety requirements and reach different conclusions. To borrow from other sections of the ADA, direct threat needs to be based upon the best objective and current medical evidence. Of course, that is nice to say, but how that can possibly be carried out in the restaurant setting is a difficult question for sure, especially when a restaurant allows food to be brought in in some circumstances.
  13. Fundamental alteration is an affirmative defense and the burden is on the defendant.
  14. The dissent’s standard that a person with a disability is only entitled to an experience “as equal as possible,” as a person without a disability also troubles me. The reason it troubles me is once again you have a judge, probably one without a disability, deciding what is an equal as possible experience when compared to persons without disabilities. I would prefer the more objective meaningful access standard over an “equal as possible,” standard.
  15. One thing that is happening more and more now is you are seeing litigation over what is necessary. Litigation over what is necessary is a recent development, but I would expect that trend to continue.
  16. Absolutely agree that the ADA does not require places of public accommodation to provide the precise modification requested by the disabled individual. However, if that is the case, then the ADA must require outside of the employment context an interactive process. How else can this be figured out?
  17. I don’t agree with the dissent’s view that people who bring in home-cooked meals will stiff the servers on tips. It doesn’t work like that. Oftentimes, a person is so grateful for being accommodated, that they will leave a tip as if they had purchased a meal even though they didn’t.
  18. A petition for an en banc rehearing would not surprise me.
  19. The majority keep referring to “because,” when it comes to causation. However, that isn’t the standard. For title III claims, the standard is on the basis of per 42 U.S.C. §12182(a).
  20. Appealing this decision to the United States Supreme Court would be very dangerous assuming that the United States Supreme Court would take it. There are all kinds of wildcards here. For example, the Supreme Court could decide that on the basis and because mean two different things. Also, the Supreme Court could decide that title III incorporates an otherwise qualified/qualified element into it. They could also decide that title III incorporates an interactive process. It is not a given at all that the United States Supreme Court would necessarily decide with the Corporation when it come to this scenario, which is a nonemployment scenario. As I have mentioned before, persons with disabilities have fared very well at the Supreme Court outside of the employment context. So, if I was on the defense side here, I would probably pass on appealing to the United States Supreme Court. I might go for an en banc rehearing. Otherwise, I would take my chances at trial. Just too many things could happen at the Supreme Court with this particular case to risk it.

I have long been interested in the ADA and how it applies to sports. In the very first edition of my book in 2000, I talked about the hypothetical of what would happen if Sean Elliott, who underwent a kidney transplant from his brother in 1999, was given grief when he returned to professional  basketball. For those of us who don’t know about Sean Elliott, he had an absolutely fabulous career at the University of Arizona, where believe it or not, says Wikipedia anyway, he is still the leading scorer after all these years. He then went on to an excellent career in the NBA where he won championships and made numerous All-Star teams. He spent his career with San Antonio at first, then Detroit, and then back to San Antonio. Currently, he is a game analyst for the San Antonio Spurs. In my original edition of Understanding the ADA, I talked about how to analyze the situation where a professional basketball player had one functioning kidney and was given grief. That got into a discussion of playing time, direct threat, among other things. Now, history repeats itself with the case of the day, Hammond v. University of Southern Mississippi, a November 2018 decision from the Southern District of Mississippi. As usual, the blog entry is divided into categories, and they are: facts, court’s reasoning; and takeaways. The reader is free to focus on any or all of the categories.

I

Facts

Plaintiff was a student and football player at the University of Southern Mississippi, and he only has one kidney. According to Plaintiff, USM’s football staff enticed him to transfer to USM by offering a full scholarship if he worked his way onto the team’s two-deep roster. After Plaintiff transferred, he received a physical evaluation at USM’s Student Health Services Center. The report noted that Plaintiff had only one kidney but cleared him to play without restrictions.

During a team practice, Plaintiff mentioned to one of the trainers that he only had one kidney. The trainer immediately removed Plaintiff from practice and took him to the team physician. The physician did not clear Plaintiff to play, citing the potential liability to USM if he were injured. Plaintiff sought a second opinion as permitted by USM’s Sports Medicine Policies and Procedures, and his nephrologist stated that no restrictions were necessary. Plaintiff also offered to execute a waiver of liability, but USM would not allow him to play. Plaintiff filed this lawsuit against USM in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana. He asserted, among other things, claims of discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. Defendant filed a Motion to Dismiss.

 

II

Court’s Reasoning Denying the Motion to Dismiss The §504ClaimAndTitleIIClaim

 

  1. Under 42 U.S.C. §§12102(1),(3)(A), for a regarded as claim, a plaintiff is only required to establish that the defendant knew of the impairment and withheld public services or benefits because of it.
  2. A person with one functioning kidney has a physical impairment as contemplated by the ADA.
  3. The allegations, which must be accepted as true at the motion to dismiss stage, are sufficient to satisfy that burden. In particular: 1) the head athletic trainer removed the plaintiff from practice after learning he had only one kidney; 2) defendant’s team physician would not clear him to play football because he only had one kidney; 3) the head athletic trainer continued to hold him from practice after receiving the report from his nephrologist because the head athletic trainer believed that playing football with one kidney posed a liability issue for the school and a danger to plaintiff’s health; and 4) defendant’s athletic department told other school that he did not pass the physical because he only had one kidney so the plaintiff had trouble landing somewhere else.
  4. University of Southern Mississippi also claimed sovereign immunity, but the court was having none of it because the plaintiff also alleged §504 violations. If an entity receives federal funds, that entity waives sovereign immunity in a suit for damages under §504 of the Rehabilitation Act. So, since the two laws (§504 and title II of the ADA), are virtually identical except for causation, it is not necessary to address the question of whether sovereign immunity applies to the title II claim when it doesn’t to the §504 claim.

III

Takeaways

  1. If one tries to give a hypothetical as to what a regarded as case would look like, you can’t do much better than this one.
  2. Certainly, a person with one functioning kidney has a physical impairment. A person with a one functioning kidney operates in the same way pretty much as a person with two. It would be an interesting question as to whether such a person would have an actual disability. It is certainly possible that is the case, but it wasn’t necessary to visit that question here.
  3. The seminal case on direct threat is Chevron, U.S.A. Inc. v. Echazabal, 536 U.S. 73 (2002). In that case, the Supreme Court said that any direct threat defense must be based upon a reasonable medical judgment relying on the most current medical knowledge and/or the best available objective evidence. Further, that assessment has to be based upon an individualized assessment of the individual’s present ability to safely perform the essential functions.
  4. DOJ’s title II regulations, 28 C.F.R. §35.139, essentially adopt the Chevron formulation. However, unlike the EEOC regulations on direct threat, the title II and title III direct threat regulations put out by DOJ only apply to direct threat to others and not to self. So, in this case, University of Southern Mississippi appears to have not only regarded the plaintiff as having a disability but also made a determination that the person was a direct threat to himself. That presents a problem because the DOJ regulations do not factor in direct threat to self; they only factor in direct threat to others. It certainly does not seem like the plaintiff was a direct threat to others.
  5. Even assuming a title II anything can argue that the ADA would exclude someone from participating in its programs if they were a direct threat to self, there seems to be a question of fact here as to whether the University of Southern Mississippi relied on the most current medical knowledge and/or the best available objective evidence when making its determination. Again, it is certainly not a foregone conclusion, that the direct threat to self defense even exists because the University of Southern Mississippi is a title II entity, and this is not an employment situation.
  6. Colleges and Universities have been fighting tooth and nail that their division I men’s football and basketball athletes are not employees. Here, if the plaintiff was an employee, that would activate the direct threat to self-defense. On the other hand, it would create all kinds of problem for the college or university that they probably don’t want to deal with.
  7. Liability risk isn’t the issue, rather the issue is whether the plaintiff is a direct threat to self or others (if title I), or whether they are a direct threat to others (title II and title III). In a way, this case reminds me of the case, which we discussed here, where the company had a 1% rule with respect to whether a person would be able to do a job with respect to future injuries being possible. The ADA and Rehabilitation Act do not work that way. They both require an individualized analysis using the most current medical knowledge and/or the best available objective evidence before reaching a conclusion that a person is a direct threat.
  8. The case is now finishing up the discovery stage. I am sure the defendant’s motion for summary judgment will be coming before too long.
  9. If I am the plaintiff, I would move to exclude any evidence about direct threat to self since this is a title II case, and therefore, not relevant. It bears noting that the original direct threat case was a Rehabilitation Act case involving direct threat to others and not to self.

This is a situation I see all the time. Let’s say you are at a university. A student goes to disability services, gets an accommodation plan, even gives it to the teacher. The teacher resists. The student may or may not try to fix it until later in the semester figuring that something will develop. Or, I have also seen this, disability services doesn’t have much influence at another one of the University’s schools. That is, disability services focuses on undergraduate programs but the professional schools do their own things regardless of what disability services says. How does a student deal with such a situation and what are the problems? An excellent blog entry discussing all of this can be found here. The question I want to address is a bit different. That is, when does the statute of limitations begin to run. Let’s take a different situation, but analogous. A person with a disability repeatedly notifies a municipality that it is out of compliance with the ADA. Municipality doesn’t do anything to fix the problem. Despite the person’s best efforts, nothing happens. Eventually, the person sues. However, the person sues more than two years after first notifying the City of the problem. The City never fixed the problem. Does the plaintiff lose on statute of limitations grounds. In case you are thinking that this kind of fact pattern is familiar, it is. We discussed that situation here. Turns out that case went up on appeal to the 10th Circuit, and on May 15, 2019, a panel of the 10th Circuit came down with a unanimous opinion adopting the repeated violations doctrine, which definitely bears discussing. Since I have simplified the fact pattern above and also have talked about it extensively in my prior blog entry discussing this case, I am going to dispense with the facts. So, the blog entry is going to be divided into court’s reasoning and takeaways. The reader, of course, is free to focus on any or all of the categories, but probably will wind up reading the whole thing. I want to thank Garret DeReus of Bizer & DeReus in New Orleans for sending the case along to me. I actually had breakfast with Garret when I was attending the Federal Bar Association’s Civil Rights Etouffee in New Orleans. His firm does title II and title III ADA plaintiff work around the country. Congratulations to him on his victory.

I

Court’s Reasoning

  1. A public entity commits a new violation and the qualified person with the disability experiences a new injury each day when the public entity fails to act. In essence, the statute of limitations functions as a look back by restricting a plaintiff’s right to relief for injury suffered during the limitation period immediately prior to filing suit and while the suit is pending.
  2. A public entity violates title II of the ADA and §504 of the Rehabilitation Act every day it fails to remedy a noncompliant service, program, or activity. Therefore, the statute of limitations limits a plaintiff’s right to relief to injuries for the period during the limitation period counting backwards from the day he or she filed the lawsuit and for any injury sustained while the lawsuit is pending.
  3. The doctrine of repeated violations and the doctrine of continuing violation are different animals entirely. The continuing violation doctrine takes a bunch of different occurrences and combines them into one. On the other hand, the repeated violation doctrine takes each occurrence as a separate matter with a separate statute of limitations attaching to each. If you are a visual person, the court discusses this visually in the opinion. I am definitely not a person who learns by diagrams.
  4. On appeal, the plaintiff argued only for the repeated violation doctrine and let go of the continuing violation doctrine even though both were argued at the District Court level. It turns out that was a very wise move on part of the plaintiff.
  5. A qualified individual with a disability is excluded from participation in, denied the benefits of, and subjected to discrimination under the service, program, or activity of the public entity the day that person is deterred from utilizing them due to its noncompliance. Only when the public entity remedies the noncompliant service, program, or activity or when the plaintiff no longer evidences an attempt to utilize it, does the limitation period end. So, this means the statute of limitation bars recovery only for those injuries incurred outside of the limitation period immediately preceding the day of suit. It also does not bar recovery for injuries incurred within the limitation period or after plaintiff files suit.
  6. Both the language of title II of the ADA, 42 U.S.C. §12132, and §504 of the Rehabilitation Act, 29 U.S.C. §794, are phrased in the present tense. That suggests a qualified individual currently experiencing discrimination under either law suffers an injury. The phrasing also suggests a qualified individual suffers new discrimination and a new injury each day she cannot utilize a noncompliant service, program, or activity even where the barriers giving rise to the claim are ones encountered before.
  7. Assuming sidewalks and curb cuts are a service, program, or activity of a public entity (the court specifically expresses no opinion on that and remands that question back to the lower court for consideration), a qualified individual with a disability is still excluded from utilizing any given sidewalk or curb cut each day it remains noncompliant.
  8. In a footnote, the 10th Circuit points out that numerous regulations implementing the ADA are also phrased in the present tense.
  9. The United States Supreme Court has recognized that failure to accommodate persons with disabilities often has the same practical effect as outright exclusion, and therefore, title II imposes an affirmative obligation on a public entity to accommodate persons with disabilities.
  10. The duty to accommodate contained both in title II of the ADA and in §504 of the Rehabilitation Act clearly and unambiguously convey that noncompliant services, programs, or activities, give rise to repeated violations. Therefore, failing to act in the face of an affirmative duty equals liability. Also, that means if the entity under the affirmative duty to act fails to act while the underlying problem remains not fixed, then every day’s inaction amount to a new violation.
  11. In a footnote, the court noted that the analogy is to temporary nuisance claims. The continuance of a nuisance is a new nuisance every day. So, as long as the temporary nuisance continues unabated, a plaintiff brings suit effectively on day one of the new limitation period. So, here, where an injury repeatedly occurs so long as the service, program, or activity remains noncompliant and the qualified person with a disability is aware and deterred from utilizing it.
  12. Congressional goals of full participation, inclusion, and integration for qualified individuals with disabilities is also consistent with and strongly suggest that the repeated violation doctrine is the proper one to follow. After all, a qualified individual can’t fully participate or be fully included in a service, program, or activity if the person cannot utilize it in a similar way as a person without a disability. Further, that fact doesn’t change simply because he or she would deterred from utilizing the service, program, or activity many times before.
  13. The key question is whether the qualified individual with a disability can fully participate now (emphasis is in the court’s opinion), in the service, program, or activity. The repeated violation doctrine is perfect for this reality, and it also encourages public entities to comply with their affirmative and ongoing obligation to accommodate a qualified individual with a disability by giving that person the ability to seek relief any time he or she cannot fully participate or is not fully included in the service, program, or activity of the public entity.
  14. In the findings section of the ADA (42 U.S.C. §§12101(a)(8), 12101(b)(4)), Congress used terms such as “continuing existence,” and, “faced day to day by people with disabilities.” Similarly, in the Rehabilitation Act findings, 29 U.S.C. §701(a)(5), it uses the phrase, “individuals with disabilities continually encounter various forms of discrimination.” This kind of language demonstrate that Congress understood a public entity can repeatedly cause a qualified individual with a disability to suffer an injury from the same service, program, or activity and nothing in the text of title II or §504 suggests otherwise.
  15. Congress did not design the ADA or to Rehabilitation Act to allow a public entity to forever prevent a qualified individual with a disability from utilizing a service, program, or activity.
  16. Title II and §504 clearly and unambiguously require application of the repeated violation doctrine.
  17. In a footnote, the court noted that applying the repeated violation doctrine to title II and §504 claims serves the interest of efficiency because more than just the rights of the plaintiff before the court are involved. In fact, many other qualified individuals with disabilities also benefit from a ruling favorable to the plaintiff. So, if the repeating violation doctrine were not to apply, then a basically identical lawsuit but timely suit brought by a different plaintiff would land in the court’s lap soon thereafter.
  18. In these kind of cases, injunctive relief is even more important than damages.
  19. The repeated violation doctrine means that a defendant cannot brandish the statute of limitations as a shield to fully protect themselves from suit. However, they can wield the statute of limitations as a sword to chop off damages arising before the limitation period comes in the play.
  20. The repeated violation doctrine does not eviscerate statute of limitations. Instead, it limits the plaintiff’s ability to recover damages to only those injuries incurred during the limitation period immediately preceding suit as well as to any damages for any injuries incurred after filing suit. So, if a plaintiff first discovers a city’s noncompliant sidewalk and curb cuts in 1996 but still bring suit in October of 2016, that plaintiff does not get damages for every injury sustained throughout those 20 years. Instead, the damages would be restrictive than those injury suffered before October of 2014. Similarly, the court noted in a footnote, that if a plaintiff conceded that in 2016 the public entity completely and entirely remedied the problem, then plaintiff’s claims would be entirely barred even with the repeated violation doctrine.
  21. When it comes to damages under title II of the ADA and §504, Supreme Court precedent rules out punitive damages. Also, any damages have to be intentional. The requirement that damages have to be intentional, is an additional limitation on the public entity’s liability under title II and §504.
  22. The court doesn’t have a problem with the repeated violation doctrine meaning that public entities are on the hook for injunctive relief as the years go by. That doesn’t raise any red flags because Congress was quite specific in demanding full participation, inclusion, and integration in society for those with disabilities. Further, this give public entities and incentive to remedy noncompliant services, programs, or activities in a reasonable and efficient manner to ensure full participation. Finally, public entities can moot the whole problem by simply making their program, services, and activities accessible for persons with disabilities.
  23. As we have talked before in our blog, another limitation that a plaintiff has to deal with with respect to injunctive relief, is that they no longer suffer an injury once they stop asserting an intent to return to where the violations are occurring. So, if a plaintiff were to move away and had no intent to return, any such injury disappears. Finally, the doctrine of laches can also come into play when it comes to injunctive relief.

III

Takeaways

  1. This is the first Circuit that I know of adopting the repeated violation doctrine. The repeated violation doctrine has important differences from the continuing violation doctrine, which is almost impossible to get a federal court to apply.
  2. I expect this decision to have a big impact on title II entities and on entities taking federal funds, particularly colleges and universities. It isn’t unusual at all for a plaintiff dealing with either to run into a brick wall.
  3. The grammatical tense used by the disability antidiscrimination laws and their final implementing regulations do, in my opinion, give support to the repeated violation doctrine. I also find the congressional findings discussion and the temporary nuisance analogy persuasive. The repeated violation doctrine also takes into account the day-to-day realities faced by people with disabilities.
  4. Repeated violation doctrine is not an open-ended situation for statute of limitations. Think of it as a look back. So, if a person deals with a two-year statute of limitations, then the claims that are in play are those arising during the years prior to the filing of the suit.
  5. The case given strong credence to the argument that a failure to accommodate is an adverse action.
  6. This also means that failing to fix the problem creates a new beginning of a statute of limitation timeframe for every day that the problem is not fixed.
  7. Especially at the college and university level, when a student runs into t hat brick wall with the school not carrying out the disability services accommodations, they often have to leave. Having gone through such a crazy experience, the student may not want to return at all. One of the jobs, and not an easy one, of the plaintiff advocate is convincing the student that they should return if given the opportunity because injunctive relief is definitely a plaintiff lawyer wants to have in his or her quiver at the case proceeds.
  8. Under title III of the ADA, damages are not a possibility. All you get is attorney fees and injunctive relief. Under title II of the ADA, damages are possibility if you can show intentional discrimination. Same goes for §504 of the Rehabilitation Act. What this court doesn’t address, it is just what is intentional discrimination. That may vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. One of the leading cases discussing this question is from the 11th Circuit, and we discussed that case here. So, in addition to the lower court having to decide whether sidewalks, curbs, and ramps are a program (we did talk about sidewalks previously here as well as here), the lower court is also going to have to figure out just what is intentional discrimination.
  9. For those who do not know, laches is a doctrine that can come into play when seeking equitable remedies, which includes an injunction. That doctrine means that the plaintiff has to come to the matter with clean hands.
  10. The repeated violation doctrine also incentivizes prompt handling of reasonable accommodation requests.

Today’s blog entry discusses the case that came down from the United States Supreme Court on May 13, 2019, discussing interstate sovereign immunity. The case is Franchise Tax Board of California v. Hyatt. We have blogged on sovereign immunity before, such as here. It is an incredibly complicated area of the law, but this case isn’t that difficult compared to what we have blogged on before. As usual, the blog entry is divided into categories and they are: facts; majority opinion; dissenting opinion; and takeaways. The reader is free to focus on any or all of the categories.

I

Facts

The facts are rather convoluted. Suffice to say, this was the third time this case came before the Supreme Court, but the first time the issue of interstate sovereign immunity was specifically considered. It involved an individual, Hyatt, who made a boatload of money on a microchip while residing in California. He later moved to Nevada. California thought the move was a sham and went after him for big time tax liability. The person being pursued by California for tax liability turned the tables on them by suing them in Nevada for torts he alleged the agency committed during the audit. California authorities argued throughout that they were immune from suit according to California law. After the case went up to the Supreme Court for the first time, Hyatt prevailed at trial. Eventually, the Nevada Supreme Court upheld a $1 million judgment on one of the claims and remanded for new damages trial on another. Then, it went up to the Supreme Court a second time where the Supreme Court said that the full faith and credit clause required Nevada to grant the California Board the same immunity that Nevada agencies enjoy. When the Nevada Supreme Court instructed the trial court to enter damages in accordance with the statutory Nevada provisions, it went back up to the Supreme Court for a third time for specifically considering interstate sovereign immunity. In a prior case, dating back 40 years, the Supreme Court had said that a State could or could not grant sovereign immunity to another State. That is, the grant of sovereign immunity was not mandatory regardless of what the other State’s law might say. In other words, sovereign immunity is available only if the forum State voluntarily decides to respect the dignity of the other State as a matter of comity, or respect.

II

Majority Reasoning That Sovereign Immunity Is Mandatory Where the Other State’s Law Says So

  1. At the time of the founding of the United States, States were immune under both the common law and the law of nations. The Constitution’s use of the term “States,” reflects both kinds of traditional immunity. States retain those aspects of sovereignty except as altered by the plan of the constitutional convention or certain constitutional amendments.
  2. When the States ratified the Constitution, they surrendered a portion of their immunity by consenting to suit brought against them by the United States in federal courts. While such jurisdiction of the federal courts is not conferred by the Constitution in express words, it is inherent in the constitutional plan.
  3. The whole idea behind the 11th amendment in light of its history and structure is to preserve the States traditional immunity from private suits.
  4. The Constitution affirmatively alters the relationship between the States so that they no longer relate to each other solely as foreign sovereigns. Each State’s equal dignity and sovereignty under the Constitution implies certain constitutional limitations on the sovereignty of its sister States, such as the inability of one State to bring another into its courts without the latter’s consent.
  5. The Constitution implicitly strips States of any power they once had to refuse each other sovereign immunity, just as it denies them the power to resolve order disputes by political means.
  6. There are many constitutional doctrines not spelled out in the Constitution but are nevertheless implicit in the structure and supported by historical practice, such as: judicial review; intergovernmental tax immunity; executive immunity; and the president’s removal power. Like those doctrines, the States sovereign immunity is a historically rooted principal embedded in the text and structure of the Constitution.
  7. The decision to overrule precedent means looking at: the prior decision’s quality of reasoning; the prior decision’s consistency with related decisions; legal developments since the decision; and reliance on the decision. All of those criteria are met according to the majority because the prior decision failed to account for the historical understanding of state sovereign immunity. It also failed to consider how the Constitution reordered the States relationship with one another. Further, that decision, to the majority’s eyes, was an outlier in sovereign immunity jurisprudence when compared to more recent decisions. Finally, the reliance factor is minimal as it only involves Hyatt incurring the loss of litigation expenses and a favorable decision.

III

Dissenting Opinion Reasoning

  1. At the time of the founding of the United States, nations granted other nations sovereign immunity in their courts not as a matter of legal obligation but as a matter of choice. In legal jargon, comity or grace or consent.
  2. No provision of the Constitution gives States absolute immunity in each other’s courts.
  3. Concept like “constitutional design,” and “plan of the convention;” are highly abstract and difficult to apply. Such concepts invite differing interpretations as much as the Constitution’s broad liberty protecting phrases such as “due process,” and “liberty.” They also suffer from the additional disadvantage of not actually appearing anywhere in the United States Constitution.
  4. Where the Constitution alters the authority of States with respect to other States, it tends to do so explicitly, such as what is found in the import export clause and in the full faith and credit clause.
  5. Why would the framers silently and without any evident reason transform sovereign immunity from one based upon consent into an absolute immunity that States must accord one another?
  6. Overruling a case always require special justification, which is not present in this case. That is, while reasonable judges can disagree about whether the prior decision was correct, the very fact that disagreement is possible shows that overruling the decision is obviously wrong.
  7. States normally grant sovereign immunity voluntarily. If they fear that this practice is insufficiently protective, they can enter into an interstate compact guaranteeing that the normal practice of granting immunity continues.
  8. It is dangerous to overrule decision only because five members of the later court come to agree with earlier dissenters on a difficult legal question.

IV

Takeaways

  1. So, what does this mean in terms of how sovereign immunity works. The way it works now after this decision with respect to an individual suing their own State has not changed. That is, the court is going to first look at whether the State has explicitly consented to being sued. If it is a situation where a federal law, such as the ADA, forces a State to waive their sovereign immunity, then the court will attack it this way. First, they will look to whether the State has consented to being sued. Second, if the answer is no, the court turns to federal law to determine if the federal law explicitly waives the State’s sovereign immunity. Finally, if the federal law does do that, which the ADA for example does, then the very complicated question becomes whether the waiver of sovereign immunity is consistent with the enforcement clause of the 14th amendment to the United States Constitution.
  2. With respect to a person residing in one State but then suing a different State with respect to federal law, the analysis would be the same as in ¶ IV1. With respect to a State law, the analysis turns entirely upon whether the State has waived consent to being sued. If the answer is that they have not, then the forum State now has no choice but to grant the sovereign immunity. The harder question is what if it is not clear whether consent has been waived or not. In that case, does the forum State refer the matter to the other State’s courts for a decision much in the way federal courts may ask for an opinion from a State court on a matter of State law?
  3. Justice Breyer’s statement about the danger of overruling the decision when five members of the later court come to agree with earlier dissenters comes immediately after citing to a decision dealing with abortion. That placement is undoubtedly intentional.
  4. ¶ II6 of this blog entry is emphasized intentionally. This kind of statement is not something you expect from a conservative jurist, as they typically look into the text of the document to figure out what the document means at the time it was written. If they don’t try and figure out what document means at the time it was written, they would probably try to figure it out in terms of the plain meaning of the document. Looking to what is embedded in the text and structure of the Constitution potentially blows things wide open. One can argue that that approach isn’t really any different than finding a penumbra of privacy in Griswold v. Connecticut. In fact, Justice Douglas took that very approach in reaching the conclusion that the Constitution had a penumbra of privacy emanating from several different constitutional provisions. See Griswold v. Connecticut 381 U.S. 479, 482-485 (1965). Similarly, Justice Goldberg joined by Chief Justice Warren and Justice Brennan referred to the language and history of the ninth amendment to find a right of marital privacy. Id. at 487. So, look for a huge fight at the Supreme Court when the abortion decisions come up before it with respect to whether prior decisions should be overruled or not. ¶ II6 gives the four liberal justices all kinds of ammunition to argue that considering Griswold and the many years since then, that some level of pro-choice (up to a point of viability?), is now embedded in the Constitution.
  5. You may be asking what does any of this have to do with the rights of persons with disabilities? A fair question. I’m not exactly sure. However, I think the whole area of sovereign immunity is so fascinating that I just couldn’t resist blogging on this case.
Smoking Gun

Today’s blog entry discusses two cases, both dealing with smoking guns (hence, the cannon above).

One is from the Sixth Circuit, Baum v. Metro Restoration Services, Inc., Decided on April 11, 2019. The other is EEOC v. Crain Automotive Holdings LLC from the Eastern District of Arkansas, also decided on April 11, 2019. As usual, the blog entry is divided into categories, and they are: Crain’s facts; Crain’s reasoning; Crain’s takeaways; Baum’s facts; Baum’s reasoning; and Baum takeaways. Of course, the reader is free to focus on any or all of the categories.

I

Crain Facts Taken Directly From The Opinion

Judith Vaughn began working for Crain Automotive Holdings, LLC in the fall of 2016. Vaughn suffers from anxiety, depression, and panic attacks. Late in the day on Monday, January 30, 2017, Vaughn began experiencing chest pains and went to the emergency room, fearing she was having a heart attack. After two days of treatment Vaughn learned her chest pain had been the result of a panic attack. She ultimately reported back to work on Friday, but she began experiencing a panic attack and left work, after emailing her supervisor. When Vaughn returned to work the following Tuesday, she met with two supervisors, Kim Lynch and Debbie Pumphrey, and was terminated. According to Vaughn, she was told at this meeting that “it was not working out” due to her health problems and that she needed to take care of herself.

II

Crain’s Reasoning

  1. McDonnell-Douglas only applies where a plaintiff does not have direct evidence of discrimination.
  2. Direct evidence is evidence showing a specific link between the discriminatory intent and the adverse employment action sufficient for a reasonable jury to find an illegitimate criterion actually motivated the adverse employment action.
  3. Where direct evidence of discrimination exists, a plaintiff gets to the jury based on that evidence alone.
  4. No dispute that Vaughn has anxiety, depression, and panic attacks. With respect to her panic attacks, those attacks make her feel paralyzed, cause chest pain, and cause difficulty with breathing, thinking, communicating with others, and reasoning. Her anxiety causes her to have difficulty breathing and communicating and an inability to think coherently. Finally, when her depression is active, she is unable to care for herself, communicate with others, or think coherently.
  5. It doesn’t matter that Vaughn can perform some demanding activities and that she does not have panic attacks constantly because an impairment substantially limiting one major life activity does not need to substantially limit other major life activities in order to be considered a substantially limiting impairment. Also, episodic impairments are a disability when they substantially limit a major life activity when active. Finally, Toyota Motor’s definition of substantial limitation was overruled by the amendments to the ADA [my words, but what the court essentially said].
  6. The evidence presented by the EEOC makes clear that Vaughn’s employer was on notice that she had anxiety, depression, and had suffered a panic attack. She also had put the employer on notice that she had had a heart catheterization. Accordingly, a reasonable jury could find that when Vaughn was fired the following Tuesday, the employer certainly knew about her anxiety, depression, and panic attacks. Further, the jury could find that the employer had some knowledge of the extent of Vaughn’s impairments as they had caused her chest pain resulting in a heart catheterization as well as missing several days of work.
  7. Actions or remarks by employers reflecting a discriminatory attitude or comments that demonstrate a discriminatory intent (the legal jargon is animus), in the decisional process, or comments made by individuals closely involved in employment decisions may all constitute direct evidence of discrimination.
  8. At the meeting between Vaughn and her two supervisors to talk about why she had left work early, Vaughn was specifically told that “due to her health, it wasn’t going to work out and she should take time for herself.” If believed by the jury, and it is the jury’s call, the comment is direct evidence of discrimination that would enable a jury to find the employer motivated by Vaughn’s disability when it fired her.
  9. The supervisor’s comment is a far cry from stray remarks in the workplace for several reasons: 1) it was made during the meeting in which Vaughn was fired; 2) it was made by Vaughn’s supervisor; 3) it relates directly to the decision to fire the plaintiff; and 4) no reason exists to suspect that the suggestion that the Vaughn should take care of her health or take time for herself was made with the intent of attempting to preserve and promote her as she was fired in the same conversation.
  10. Magic words are simply not required when it comes to requesting a reasonable accommodation. Instead, all a plaintiff has to do is make clear to the employer that he or she wants assistance for his or her disability. That is, an employee only needs to provide the employer with enough information that, under the circumstances, the employer can be fairly said to know about the disability and the desire for an accommodation. A question of material fact exists here because plaintiff produced an email in which she stated that a letter from her doctor was attached.

III

Crain Takeaways

  1. This whole direct evidence/indirect evidence gets really confusing. Previously, I talked about that confusion and how Seventh Circuit may or may not have have done away with the whole thing.
  2. Whether you are going with direct evidence or indirect evidence, it is clear that mixed motive is involved as both tests use motivating factor.
  3. The amendments to the ADA change what substantial limitation means and it also changed dealing with episodic impairments.
  4. Labor and employment lawyers are quite fond of saying that magic words are not required. The problem is what does that exactly mean? This case does a real nice job of presenting a standard for when a reasonable accommodation request has been made where magic words are not used. In particular, all the employee has to do is make clear to the employer that he or she wants assistance for his or her disability. That, is also vague, but the court goes further when it says, citing to an Eighth Circuit case, “an employee need only provide the employer with enough information that, under the circumstances, the employer can be fairly said to know about the disability and desire for an accommodation.”

IV

Baum Facts Taken from the Opinion

A few months after Plaintiff Jonathan Baum began having heart problems, his employer, Defendant Metro Restoration Services, fired him. Not only that, Metro’s owner told him he was losing his job because of his health issues. So, Baum sued for disability discrimination, and the district court granted summary judgment in Metro’s favor after concluding that Baum couldn’t establish he was disabled.

Metro repairs property damage after catastrophic events such as storms and fires. In 2013, the company hired Baum as a scheduler. As the job title suggests, Baum determined which of Metro’s work crews would go to which job sites and when they would go. In late 2014, Baum began having heart problems. Over the course of several months, he went to the emergency room fearing he had had a heart attack; had a CAT scan; had a heart catheter implanted; had an echocardiogram (which outlines the heart’s movement using high-frequency sound waves); and wore a heart monitor for more than a month. During this time, he occasionally missed work for medical tests and treatments. He also worked remotely sometimes. He kept his boss and owner of Metro, Patrick Cahill, informed of his medical issues. One weekend in the spring of 2015, severe weather hit. Baum worked remotely to coordinate Metro’s crews. The next week, Cahill went to Baum’s home and fired him. During their conversation, Cahill said he was firing Baum “due to [Baum’s] health issues and doctors’ appointments.” Baum then sued Metro in state court for disability discrimination under both the Americans with Disabilities Act and Kentucky law. Metro removed the case to federal court.

V

Baum Court’s Reasoning

  1. Cahill’s statement that he was firing the plaintiff because of his health issues is direct evidence of discrimination.
  2. Since direct evidence of discrimination exists, plaintiff has to show that: 1) he has a disability; and 2) he is otherwise qualified for the job despite the disability either without accommodation, with an alleged essential job requirement eliminated, or with a proposed reasonable accommodation. (For the labor and employment lawyer really familiar with the ADA, I know what you are thinking. This is not a misprint).
  3. Metro never contested plaintiff’s qualifications for the job without accommodations, and therefore, forfeited the argument by failing to raise the argument earlier than at oral argument.
  4. Expert testimony is needed to show whether the plaintiff is substantially limited in the major life activities of cardiovascular and circulatory functions because cardiovascular and circulatory functions require medical knowledge to understand.
  5. Absent medical expert testimony, the plaintiff can’t create a factual issue of whether he has a disability. Accordingly, summary judgment was correctly granted on that score.
  6. With respect to the perceived disability claim, a plaintiff does not need to prove a limitation on a major life activity.
  7. Cahill’s words v. the plaintiff’s word creates a classic credibility dispute that is a task for the jury.
  8. While it is true that Cahill’s knowledge of plaintiff’s medical issues is not sufficient to carry the day, plaintiff has more than that here. In particular, he has Cahill’s stated reason for firing him: his health issues and doctors appointments. That statement creates a factual dispute and makes it material. Accordingly, giving the plaintiff the benefit of the doubt, which a court has to do at the summary judgment stage, a jury could find that Cahill meant exactly what he said. If the jury found such, then it could also find that Cahill perceived the plaintiff to have a physical impairment and fired him because of that perception.

VI

Baum Takeaways

  1. I am completely mystified by the court saying that one of the ways to show a plaintiff is otherwise qualified is to show that he can do the job with an essential job requirement eliminated. That simply isn’t the way the ADA works. The ADA does not require an employer to eliminate essential job functions. An employer may be required to engage in job restructuring, which we discussed here. They also may want to move marginal functions to others. That said, job restructuring and putting marginal functions on others are not the same as eliminating essential job requirements.
  2. If you have an argument, raise it early. We just discussed that problem here.
  3. A person may lose an actual disability case, but may be able to go forward on a regarded as claim.
  4. Sometimes you need expert medical testimony to establish whether a substantial limitation on a major life activity exists even though what is a substantial limitation on a major life activity is a much easier standard to meet since the amendments to the ADA.
  5. Direct evidence must be material to the adverse action.

A comment that applies equally to Baum and to Crain is that smoking guns are rare, but they do happen.

Previously, I have talked about how the EEOC if it wasn’t the EEOC would have committed legal malpractice in the case we talked about here. From going through my search engine, it doesn’t seem like I have talked about where the legal malpractice risks are with respect to the ADA. In going through my publishing and presenting files, I did find a presentation that I made back in 2012 on the ADA and legal malpractice risks. Our case of the day coming from the Third Circuit, Robinson v. First State Community Action Agency, a published decision from April 1, 2019, is a case where the defense undoubtedly needs to be contacting its legal malpractice insurance carrier. All of this caused me to dig up my 2012 presentation and talk about legal malpractice risks when dealing with the ADA. As usual, the blog entry is divided into categories and they are: elements of a legal malpractice claim; specific ADA legal malpractice risks; case of the day facts; court’s reasoning upholding the jury verdict; and takeaways. As usual, the reader is free to focus on any or all of the categories.

I

Elements of the Legal Malpractice Claim

  1. The elements of a legal malpractice claim vary depending upon whether litigation or transactional matters are involved. The elements may vary from State to State since legal malpractice is a state matter. Nevertheless, the elements are probably similar no matter where you are. With respect to litigation or a transactional matter, typical elements are: 1) the attorney owes the plaintiff the duty of due care arising from the attorney-client relationship; 2) attorney breached that duty; and 3) as a proximate result, the client suffered an injury. With respect to the injury, the injury is to an intangible property interest caused by the lawyer’s negligent act or omission (actual damages).
  2. With respect to proximate cause in a litigation matter, that breaks down into cause in fact and into legal cause. Cause in fact turns on showing that but for the negligence of the attorney, the client would have prevailed. Legal cause is foreseeability.
  3. With respect to cause in fact in a transactional matter, the question is whether had the undisclosed risk been known, he or she would not have accepted the risk and consented to the recommended course of action.
  4. With respect to damages in a transactional matter, damages are any damages that proximately follow from the client’s acceptance of the advice that fell below the standard of reasonable legal services.

Union Planters Bank, N.A. v. Thompson Coburn LLP, 402 Ill. App. 3d 317, 342 (fifth district 2010).

II

Specific Legal Malpractice Risks

  1. In Cleveland v. Policy Management Systems Corporation, 526 U.S. 795 (1999), United States Supreme Court said that an SSDI filing may under certain circumstances prevent a person from being able to argue later that the employer did not reasonably accommodate them with respect to the disability because the way the SSDI claim was filed meant that the person with the disability was not qualified to do the job. So, an SSDI lawyer needs to make sure that when filling out the SSDI application that somehow it is made sure that the claim that the person cannot do any job in the economic marketplace is not factoring in reasonable accommodations. Also, the SSDI attorney as a matter of course needs to advise there is a risk that by filing the SSDI claim, a future ADA claim may be put at risk.
  2. Alleging working as the major life activity. In Sutton v. United Airlines, 527 U.S. 471 (1999), the Supreme Court held that to be substantially limited in the major life activity of working, the person must be unable to perform a broad class of jobs. While the ADA amendments did overrule Sutton with respect to mandating mitigating measures be factored into whether a person has a disability, the working as a major life activity part of Sutton is untouched. It is next to impossible for a plaintiff to prevail whenever working as the major life activity is alleged. Further, since the amendments to the ADA broadened the reach of who may have a disability, using working as the major life activity is virtually always unnecessary.
  3. 100% return to work or insisting on full duty. In this blog entry, we discussed how 100% return to work policies are dead under the ADA. I have taken that position since the first edition of my book came out in 2000, but as we have seen in our blog, cases now support that position. If your company’s lawyers are signing off on full duty irrespective of reasonable accommodations or are signing off on 100% return to work policies, they have a problem.
  4. If you are licensing counsel and you have a client that is the subject of licensure proceedings because they are either being regarded as having a disability or they have a record of a disability and you don’t know the ADA, the chances are high that your client will be subject to a variety of adverse actions that may not be consistent with the ADA. You don’t want to let that happen. In my opinion, definitely a malpractice risk if it does happen.
  5. Regarded as. Before the amendment to the ADA, it wasn’t clear whether a plaintiff could argue that they needed reasonable accommodation in a regarded as case. The amendments to the ADA explicitly say that a person who is regarded as having a disability is not entitled to reasonable accommodations. If someone doesn’t realize how the law has changed here, a whole heap of trouble can ensue as we find out in the next sections of this blog.

III

Case of the Day: Robinson v. First State Community Action Agency

Facts

Robinson was told by her manager that her work performance was so poor that she either didn’t know what she was doing or she had a disability where she was dyslexic. The plaintiff taking her words seriously decided to undergo testing for dyslexia. The plaintiff sent her manager an evaluation that concluded that she had symptoms consistent with dyslexia and requested certain accommodation from the manager of human resources. The plaintiff was told that any diagnosis she received would not prevent her from performing her work in a satisfactory manner and she was advised to focus on improving her performance. Weeks later she was fired.

During litigation, plaintiff acknowledged that she could not prove she was dyslexic. She proceeded on the theory that she was perceived or regarded as dyslexic by her employer, and therefore, she was entitled to reasonable accommodation the same way someone who was dyslexic would’ve been. Both parties proceeded under this regarded as case theory through litigation, trial, and post trial briefing. Only on appeal, did the defense seek to overturn the jury’s verdict that the regarded as jury instruction was erroneous and therefore, the jury’s verdict could not stand.

IV

Court’s Reasoning Upholding the Jury Verdict

  1. The amendments to the ADA, per 42 U.S.C. §12201(h), make it clear that a person who is regarded as having a disability but who failed to demonstrate that he or she is actually a person with the disability is not entitled to a reasonable accommodation. We actually discussed the case the Third Circuit relied upon for this proposition here.
  2. The defense never addressed the effect of the 2008 amendments until its briefing on appeal.
  3. At no time did the defense object to plaintiff’s regarded as theory despite numerous opportunities to do so.
  4. The defense waived its regarded as argument in several different ways: 1) the defense was routinely confronted with plaintiff’s erroneous regarded as case theory and never objected; 2) the defense never corrected plaintiff’s error of law when plaintiff raised them in the summary judgment proceedings. Instead, the defense responded that plaintiff did not have a substantially limiting impairment; 3) the defense filed no objections to the Magistrate’s report and recommendation when the magistrate held that there was a question of material fact regarding whether the defense considered the plaintiff disabled. Further, the defendants failed to argue that a plaintiff could no longer proceed under the regarded as a disability theory for reasonable accommodation claims in light of the amendments to the ADA; 4) the viability of the regarded as case theory of the plaintiff’s was squarely before the defense again at trial. At trial, the defense voiced support for plaintiff’s proposed jury instruction even though it was informed by the plaintiff that the plaintiff was not arguing that the plaintiff actually had a disability; 5) the defendant specifically agreed that the reasonable accommodation language should be included in the jury instruction anyway; 6) at the charge conference, defense counsel voiced support for the plaintiff’s jury instruction; 7) once the jury verdict came in against the defense, the defense moved for a new trial but did not raise the error in the regarded as case theory at post trial briefing nor did it move for judgment as a matter of law on those grounds.
  5. An alleged error is waived when the defense fails to raise the objection at trial and fails to include it in post trial briefing.
  6. When a party jointly recommends a jury instruction, it cannot later complain about that very instruction. In this case, the defense did not merely failed to object to an instructional error at a charging conference, it also played along with a flawed theory of liability throughout the litigation and ultimately endorsed the specific instruction embodying that theory.
  7. The defense was initially made aware in mid-2016 of the erroneous case theory and did nothing. It also did nothing again at the beginning of trial. Finally, it invited the trial court to use a case no longer accurate that came down prior to the amendments act.
  8. While it is true that the model jury instructions are erroneous, judges and parties are not free to incorporate incorrect legal principles simply because an error exist in a model jury instruction. After all, model instructions are designed to help litigants in trial courts and not to replace their shared obligation to get the law correct when drafting proposed jury instructions. Accordingly, erroneous model jury instructions are no defense.
  9. Verdict of $22,501 affirmed.

IV

Takeaways

  1. I look for a legal malpractice claim to follow here. The damages awarded to the plaintiff was $22,501. Since the plaintiff prevailed, the defense is on the hook for attorney fees. Also, the defense probably spent $100,000-$300,000 defending the claim through trial. It will be interesting to see how the attorney fees award goes since the plaintiff had no business winning their case under the theory they proceeded under. Nevertheless, the plaintiff did take it to trial and prevailed.
  2. The amendments to the ADA made it crystal clear that a person who is regarded as having a disability is not entitled to reasonable accommodations. Accordingly, but for the negligence, the defense would have won. Accordingly, the legal malpractice cause in fact standard for litigation is met here.
  3. Don’t assume model jury instructions are accurate. They do not substitute for knowing the law in the area.
  4. Lawyers owe a duty of competence to their clients. That means if they don’t know the area as well as they need to, get someone involved as early as possible who does. Having been in this business, ADA compliance, since 1990, I have found that lawyers generally don’t do this. Perhaps, that is a reflection of the competitive pressures of law as well as lawyers thinking that all they have to do is look up statutes, regulations, and read case law. This behavior of lawyers doesn’t make a lot of sense. After all, I wouldn’t ask an eye surgeon to operate on a hernia.

This just in. Law 360 is reporting today, May 1, 2019, that the Third Circuit has denied a petition for rehearing in this case.

Hope everyone had a happy Easter and, as in my case, a happy start to the Passover holiday. Today’s blog entry come from one of the blogs that is in my blog roll, Wait a Second. The case is Natofsky v. The City of New York decided on April 18, 2019 out of the Second Circuit. It is a case involving a hard of hearing individual that was terminated from a highly paid position with the City of New York. He claimed that his hearing loss was a motivating factor in the termination. The City defended on the ground that motivating factor was not the proper rule. Here is the other thing. It wasn’t an ADA case at all. Rather, it was a case involving the Rehabilitation Act, New York law and New York City law. Finally, the District Court adopted as the causation standard a sole cause standard. As usual, the blog entry is divided into categories and they are: majority reasoning; dissent’s reasoning; and takeaways; and just in. The reader is free to focus on any or all of the categories.

I

Majority Reasoning

  1. The Rehabilitation Act provides at 29 U.S.C. §794(a) that no individual can be subject to discrimination in any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance solely by reason of his or her disability.
  2. On the other hand, the ADA at 42 U.S.C. §12112(a) makes it unlawful for an employer to discriminate against an individual on the basis of disability.
  3. In 1992, Congress amended the Rehabilitation Act to add a provision stating that the standards used to determine whether the Rehabilitation Act has been violated in a complaint alleging employment discrimination are the standards applied under Title I of the ADA. 29 U.S.C. §794(d).
  4. Whether §794(d) requires the ADA causation standard is a matter of first impression in the Second Circuit, and the court holds that an employment discrimination claim under the Rehabilitation Act is the same causation standard as an employment discrimination claim under the ADA.
  5. An established canon of construction says that a specific provision controls over one or more general application. §794(d) is more specific than §794(a), and therefore, trumps the causation standard expressed in §794(a) in the employment discrimination context. In other words, §794(a) establishes a general causation standard applicable to most discrimination claim brought under the Rehabilitation Act, but §794(d) [the opinion actually has a typo here calling it §749, but I am sure that will be corrected later], removes employment discrimination claim from the application of §794(a)’s general causation standard by mandating the ADA’s causation standard.
  6. In a footnote, the court noted that the point of view that §794(d) trumps §794(a) in Rehabilitation Act employment cases is not a universal point of view. In particular, the Fifth Circuit reached the opposite conclusion. Even so, the Second Circuit says it has good reason to disagree with the Fifth Circuit because §794(d) came later in time and speaks specifically to causation in employment discrimination cases brought under the Rehabilitation Act. Further, establishing §794(d) as a carve out for employment discrimination claims does not require Congress amending the language of §794(a)’s general causation standard because that standard continues to govern all discrimination claims arising under the Rehabilitation Act except for employment discrimination claims.
  7. While the Second Circuit previously has gone on record saying the Rehabilitation Act does not permit mixed motive suits, that is not the same as stating that the causation standard for Rehabilitation Act employment claims is a “solely by reason of” standard.
  8. Title I of the ADA at 42 U.S.C. §12112(a) prohibits employers from discriminating against a qualified individual on the basis of disability in regard to the hiring, advancement, or discharge of employees.
  9. Historically, the Second Circuit has applied a mixed motive test to ADA claims whereby the disability need only be a motivating factor in the employer’s adverse employment action but need not be the sole but for cause. At the time of those cases, the ADA prohibited discriminatory acts that were engaged in “because of,” a disability, instead of “on the basis of,” which is the case now.
  10. The mixed motive test originates from Title VII at 42 U.S.C. §2000(e)-2(a)(1), which prohibits employment discrimination “because of,” an individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Under Title VII, plaintiffs can prevail if they show that the discrimination was a motivating factor in the defendant’s adverse employment action. That said, a defendant can avoid all liability if it can prove that it would have taken the same action regardless of any impermissible consideration.
  11. Citing to Gross, which we discussed here, and to Nassar, which we discussed here, the Second Circuit said that the ADA does not include a set of provisions like Title VII’s §2000e-2(m) that permits a plaintiff to prove employment discrimination by showing the discrimination was a risk motivating factor in the adverse decision. Further, no express instruction from Congress in the ADA itself exists that the motivating factor test applies.
  12. When Congress added §2000e-2(m) to Title VII, it contemporaneously amended the ADA but did not amend the ADA to include a motivating factor test.
  13. The Fourth, Sixth, and Seventh Circuits currently require a plaintiff alleging a claim of employment discrimination under the ADA to prove that discrimination was the but for cause of any adverse employment action.
  14. Absent from the ADA is anything like §2000e-2(m), which establishes a mixed motive test.
  15. While the ADA does incorporate §2000e-5(g)(2)(B) that cross references §2000e-2(m), that is of no help because that section deals exclusively with the remedies available to plaintiff’s that have first proven of violation under §2000e-2(m), which makes no mention of disability.
  16. By incorporating §2000e-5, into the ADA, it can be assumed that Congress was aware that some of those provisions would apply only to Title VII cases and not to the ADA.
  17. Citing to Gross, the court finds no reason to hold that any meaningful difference exists between “on the basis of,” “because of,” or “based on,” that would require any other causation standard than but for.
  18. Nothing in the legislative history of the ADA indicates that “on the basis of,” was supposed to lower the causation standard for employment discrimination claims below the traditional but for standard. The legislative history that does exist suggest that the language was changed to decrease the emphasis on whether a person has a disability and not to lower the causation standard.
  19. The evidence is simply not there for the plaintiff to prevail on a but for causation standard.
  20. Plaintiff also alleged a cat’s paw theory of liability, which allows for a discriminatory motive to be imputed to a final decision-maker if the decision-maker’s adverse employment action was proximately caused by a subordinate having a discriminatory motive and intended to bring about the adverse employment action. While cat’s paw liability applicability to cases outside of the mixed motive context is an important one, the court decides to decline the opportunity to take on that question because defendants waived any objection to proceeding under that theory.
  21. Even assuming cat’s paw liability applies, the evidence is simply not there to justify application of the doctrine against plaintiff’s supervisors.
  22. The facts aren’t there to allow plaintiff’s failure to accommodate claims to go forward.
  23. The facts are also not there to allow plaintiff’s retaliation claims to go forward.

II

Dissent’s Reasoning (Judge Chin)

  1. While a but for causation standard applies to the retaliation claim, discrimination and failure to accommodate claims brought under Rehabilitation Act are governed by the same standards that courts have uniformly applied for more than two decades, i.e. mixed motive.
  2. The issue is whether the ADA continued to use a motivating factor standard in light of the 2000 amendment to the ADA and the Supreme Court’s decision in Gross. Judge Chin believes the answer to that question is yes.
  3. Gross does not apply to ADA claims. That case was an Age Discrimination in Employment Act and not an ADA case.
  4. In Gross, the court specifically mentioned that Title VII and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act are set up in fundamentally different ways with respect to the relevant burden of persuasion. That isn’t the case with the ADA as the ADA incorporates the powers, remedies, and procedures of Title VII. Therefore, different rules apply to the ADA and to the Rehabilitation Act than they do to the Age Discrimination in Employment Act.
  5. In Gross, the Supreme Court held that Age Discrimination in Employment Act claims are governed by the but for standard because the court had never held that Title VII’s motivating factor standard is applicable to Age Discrimination in Employment Act claims, and because Congress neglected to add a motivating factor provision to the Age Discrimination in Employment Act when it amended Title VII to add §§2000e-2(m) and 42 U.S.C. §2000e-5(g)(2)(B) while contemporaneously amending the Age Discrimination in Employment Act in several other ways.
  6. ¶II5 simply cannot apply to the ADA. Motivating factor standard has governed the ADA cases for more than two decades. Further, when Congress amended Title VII in 1991 to include the motivating factor language, it incorporated the motivating factor language into the ADA because the ADA at 42 U.S.C. §12117(a) explicitly refers to and adopts the enforcement provisions of Title VII, including §2000e-5. Therefore, citing to a dissenting opinion in Lewis v. Humboldt Acquisition Corporation, which we discussed here, you simply cannot draw the same inference from Congress’s actions as the Supreme Court did in Gross for Age Discrimination in Employment Act claims when it comes to the ADA.
  7. The 2008 amendment to the ADA show that Congress wanted to retain not eliminate the motivating factor standard. In particular, the primary purpose of the 2008 amendments was to reinstate a broad scope of protection to be available under the ADA because several Supreme Court cases had narrowed that scope of protection. Thus, Judge Chin fails to understand how the majority can posit that the 2008 amendments warrant deviating from the motivating factor standard that had been applied for years before the amendments.
  8. Congress could have changed the ADA’s causation standard with the 2008 amendment but did not do so. Where Congress fails to disturb a consistent judicial interpretation of the statute, that provides indication Congress at least acquiesces in if not affirms that interpretation.
  9. Since Congress amended the ADA to reject an interpretation of the ADA that was not aligned with congressional intent, that demonstrates it is likely it would also have done so for the ADA’s causation standard if courts were applying the wrong standard. The fact that Congress amended the ADA to reject an interpretation of the ADA not aligned with congressional intent demonstrates it is likely it would have done so for the ADA’s causation standard if the courts in applying the motivating factor standard were applying the wrong standard. That they did not do that indicates at least implicit acceptance of the motivating factor standard.
  10. While the ADA does not explicitly incorporate §2000e-2, it does incorporate §2000e-5. Further, §2000e-5(g)(2)(B) specifically refers to the motivating factor standard. Interpreting the ADA to require a but for standard of causation, renders that provision irrelevant and superfluous. A statute need to be construed so that it’s effect given to all of its provisions so that no part of it is inoperative, superfluous, void, or insignificant.
  11. Nothing indicates that Congress chose not to incorporate §2000e-2 into the ADA with the intent for a stricter causation standard to apply. Indeed, if that had been congressional intent, it would have omitted §2000e-5(g)(2)(B). It also would surely have explained why it was making such a significant change and Congress did not do so.
  12. The ADA’s legislative history makes clear that Congress intended claims under the ADA to continue to have the same causation standard claims under Title VII. More particularly, when Congress enacted the ADA, it intended for the ADA’s remedies to parallel Title VII’s remedies because the remedies should remain the same for minorities, women, and for persons with disabilities.
  13. A House report explained that if the powers, remedies, and procedures, for title VII change, then identical changes under the ADA for persons with disabilities will also be made. That is, by retaining the cross reference to Title VII the committee’s intent was that the remedies of Title VII currently and as amended in the future will be applicable to persons with disabilities.
  14. Since the Rehabilitation Act incorporates the ADA’s causation standard, the motivating factor standard applies to plaintiff’s claims.
  15. Plenty of evidence exists that plaintiff’s hearing loss motivated the adverse decision, in this case termination.

III

Takeaways

  1. A question not considered by this case is whether the Rehabilitation Act outside of employees of the federal government, even applies to employment situations. We discussed that question in this blog entry. Clearly, over the years, the courts have held that it does, but it isn’t a settled question. The plain language of 29 U.S.C. §794(d) would seem to suggest that the Rehabilitation Act does apply to employment outside of federal employees.
  2. I don’t think it is particularly controversial to say that when it comes to employment cases that the causation standard under the ADA and the Rehabilitation Act are the same. The controversy is over just what “on the basis,” means.
  3. If but for causation is not solely by reason of causation, then what is it? Could it be “necessary cause,” which we discussed here?
  4. In employment discrimination matters, invariably there are more than one cause associated with the adverse decision. In a but for jurisdiction, what do you do then? This happens all the time in tort law. When I was teaching tort law to paralegals and got to this concept, I would mimic the scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz. When you have more than one cause, but for becomes extremely problematic. In tort law, the courts over the years fix that problem by saying where more than one but for cause exists, substantial factor is the principal that comes into play. Perhaps, that is what the courts mean by but for causation even if they are not using the term substantial factor. Since substantial factor is not being used where more than one cause exists, it is very unclear just what but for means. Maybe, it means, “substantial factor?” Maybe, it means, “necessary cause?” Maybe, none of those are accurate.
  5. Nassar, as we discussed here, clearly states that retaliation is one thing but status-based discrimination is something else. Accordingly, that presents a strong opening to argue that mixed motive is in play for non-retaliation ADA claims.
  6. Regarding legislative history, you really have to dig for it (I mean really dig), but legislative history discussing “on the basis,” does exist that says it was congressional intent in amending the ADA to retain McDonnell Douglas when it comes to proving up ADA discrimination. You can’t retain McDonnell Douglas without engaging in mixed motive analysis.
  7. Title I and Title III both use “on the basis,” language for causation. Title II uses by reason of. The Rehabilitation Act uses, “solely by reason of.” If the majority is to be believed, you wind up with different causation standards across the Titles of the ADA. That is, under Title II of the ADA, you would have a more generous causation standard for plaintiffs than you would under Title I and Title III because Title II uses “by reason of,” and Rehabilitation Act uses, “solely by reason of.” This doesn’t make a lot of sense.
  8. The problem with the but test for is multiple causation, which is always present in employment discrimination matters. If courts are going to continue to apply this test in the future, more clarity is needed. It will be interesting to see whether they adopt necessary cause or substantial factor in those situations. Ultimately, either Congress or the Supreme Court and then possibly Congress again are to have to figure this out. The 2020 elections may have a lot to do with this.
  9. The court finds no reason to distinguish between “because of,” and, “on the basis of.” That doesn’t make a lot of sense to me because why would Congress change the terminology if the change was superfluous or meaningless?
  10. Substantial factor and necessary cause would both allow for a cat’s paw theory of liability.
  11. Hard to understand how getting rid of “because of,” in favor of “on the basis of,” somehow leads to the conclusion that the amendments to the ADA imposed a higher causation standard than what had been previously the case. As the dissenting judge noted, the amendments to the ADA were designed to overrule a whole bunch of cases from the Supreme Court severely narrowing the ability of persons with disabilities to be protected under the ADA. Making the causation standard a higher bar for plaintiffs than what had been previously would contradict those efforts. Also, Congress was quite clear in the ADA to make clear that the Supreme Court got some of the cases, the Sutton trilogy and Toyota Motor, So, why wouldn’t have Congress been clear that the causation standard was also out of whack?
  12. When the causation issue gets to the Supreme Court, the key is going to be whether the court as configured at that time will go off on the distinction Justice Kennedy made in Nassar about status-based discrimination. If so, then mixed motive is in play. Also, if the Supreme Court decides to go with but for, hopefully it will clear up what that means when there is multiple causation involved, such as by adopting a substantial factor test or a necessary cause test.

IV

Just In

 

 

Yesterday, the United States Supreme Court granted cert. in three cases discussing whether LGT individuals are protected under title VII of the Civil Rights Act. We have discussed all of that here and here. With respect to transgender, I am going to go out on a limb here and say that it won’t even be close that transgender is protected under title VII of the Civil Rights Act because Price Waterhouse prohibits gender stereotyping. By definition, discrimination against a transgender individual involves sexual stereotyping.

With respect to sexual orientation, that is going to be a much more difficult case. If the configuration of the court remains the same, I would expect it to be a 5-4 decision with Justice Kavanaugh being the swing vote (Chief Justice Robert dissented in both Obergefell and Windsor). Justice Kavanaugh is very proud of the diversity of his clerks. One also has to wonder what impact, if any, the confirmation hearings will have on any of this. Finally, I did a Westlaw search, and my search did not reveal any cases that Judge Kavanaugh had with respect to LGBT rights while on D.C. Circuit (other bloggers are reporting there are indeed none).

So, since the decision on these cases will come down next term, expect it to be a huge campaign issue. It is entirely possible that the decision in these cases could come down just a few months before 2020 elections. Also, based upon the current case law, it is entirely possible that by the end of these decisions, transgender individuals will be protected under title VII but lesbian and gay individuals will not be. In that case, if there is a Democratic wave in 2020 (Buttigieg presidency too?), which there may not be, expect Congress to specifically amend title VII of the Civil Rights Act to include LGBT explicitly.

In a previous blog entry, I discussed the case of the National Association of the Deaf v. Harvard University. That particular blog entry talked about the magistrate judge denying Harvard’s motion to dismiss. Subsequently, Harvard filed a motion for judgment on the pleadings. On March 28, 2019, the magistrate judge, Katherine Robertson, denied and granted Harvard’s motion for judgment on the pleadings. Since the facts of the case have already been discussed in my previous blog entry, we don’t have to worry about that particular category. So, the blog entry is divided into three categories and they are: court’s reasoning ADA; court’s reasoning Communications Decency Act (CDA) Immunity; and takeaways. The reader, of course, free to focus on any or all of the categories.

I

Court’s Reasoning ADA

  1. As a preliminary matter, the primary difference between a motion for judgment on the pleadings and a motion to dismiss is that a motion for judgment on the pleadings implicates the pleadings as a whole. Such motions are treated similarly as to a motion to dismiss. Accordingly, the court views the facts contained in the pleading in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party and has to draw all reasonable inferences in favor of the nonmoving party. Judgment on the pleadings is only allowed where the facts conclusively establish that the movant is entitled to the relief sought.
  2. The court goes into considerable detail over whether a place of public accommodation under title III of the ADA has to be a physical place. Ultimately, it concludes that the court has no choice but to follow the controlling law in its Circuit, which holds that a physical place is not necessary per Carparts Distribution Center, Inc. v. Automated Wholesaler’s Association of New England, Inc., 37 F.3d 12 (1st 1994).
  3. Regardless of whether or not the Supreme Court ultimately makes the decision that a physical place is required for an entity to be subject to title III of the ADA, the magistrate found that a sufficient nexus between a physical place and the plaintiff existed in this case anyway. In particular: 1) Harvard operates a brick and mortar location; 2) the online content Harvard makes available to the general public but does not make accessible to the deaf and hard of hearing community includes Harvard@Home Presentations, which are designed to bring users inside the Harvard classroom to hear current, real-life lectures or provide them with a front row seat to University panels, alumni college forums, and other special events; 3) Harvard through its extension school offers free, noncredit courses; and 4) videos with spoken content appear in the archives of Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Art and Ethnology, Harvard’s Natural History Museum, the Institute of Politics John F. Kennedy Junior forum, Harvard’s Lifesciences Outreach program, and Harvard’s Woodberry Poetry Room. Since it can be inferred that all of this online content is the same as a good or service that is, or was, also available at one or more of the physical locations at Harvard, plaintiffs have sufficiently pled the existence of inaccessible content on websites having a nexus with on-campus activities. So, when it comes to the applicability of title III, title III is applicable regardless of whether a nexus to a place of physical accommodation is required or not.
  4. DOJ regulations do not limit a public accommodation’s obligations as to online content that it chooses to host on its websites and platforms. That said, Harvard possibly could be able to demonstrate that providing captioning, or any other available auxiliary aid or service, fundamentally alters the nature of its service or results in an undue burden.
  5. 504 regulations prohibit a recipient of federal aid from discriminating in the providing any aid, benefit or service to a person with a disability directly or through contractual, licensing, or other arrangements. 34 C.F.R. §104.4(b)(1)(i)-(vii). Also, there is no persuasive support for limiting the general prohibition against discrimination in the provision of aids, services, and benefits to persons with disabilities under §504.
  6. With respect to Harvard’s internet site containing content posted on third-party websites, that becomes a matter of Harvard showing whether the fundamental alteration or undue burden affirmative defense applies. That requires a factual record to be developed.

II

Court’s Reasoning Communication Decency Act of 1996 Immunity (47 U.S.C. §230)

  1. 47 U.S.C. §230(c)(1) (§230 of the Communication Decency Act) provides protections for a “Good Samaritan,” that blocks and screens offensive materials. In particular, it says that, “no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.”
  2. The effect of 47 U.S.C. §230(c)(1) is that lawsuits seeking to hold a service provider liable for its exercise of a publisher’s traditional editorial functions-such as deciding whether to publish, withdraw, postpone or alter content- are prohibited.
  3. The CDA defines an interactive computer service as, “any information service, system, or access software provider that provides or enables computer access by multiple users to a computer server, including… systems operated or services offered by libraries or educational institution.” 47 U.S.C. §230(f)(2).
  4. The CDA defines an information content provider as, “any person or entity that is responsible, in whole or in part, for the creation or development of information provided through the Internet or any other interactive computer service. 47 U.S.C. §230(f)(3).
  5. The immunity under this section only applies when the information forming the basis of the claim has been provided by another information content provider. That is, an interactive computer service provider is liable for its own speech.
  6. Near universal agreement exists that §230 must be construed liberally. Therefore, the section operates to prohibit many causes of action premised on the publication or speaking of information content.
  7. No authority exists holding the title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 provides an exception to the immunity afforded by the CDA.
  8. In order to be covered by the immunity provision of the CDA, three things have to be shown: 1) Harvard must be a provider or user of an interactive computer service; 2) the claim of the plaintiffs have to be based upon information provided by another information content provider; and 3) the claim must treat Harvard as the publisher or speaker of that information.
  9. No support exists for plaintiff’s claims that the CDA does not apply when a plaintiff claims disability discrimination is based upon a lack of access rather than on the content of speech.
  10. Federal and state antidiscrimination statutes, see 47 U.S.C. §230(e), are not exempted from the immunity provided by the CDA.
  11. Citing to a case from the Seventh Circuit, the court noted that the Seventh Circuit held that §230 operated to preclude Fair Housing Act claims. Citing to a case from the First Circuit, the court noted that the CDA operated to preclude a claim under the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008.
  12. Since Harvard acknowledges that it hosts platforms to which online content may be uploaded, it isn’t absurd to treat Harvard as an interactive computer service.
  13. Since Harvard, to some extent, provides platforms in which third parties post content that Harvard does not create, produce or substantively alter, Harvard is hosting information provided by another Internet content provider.
  14. Since numerous cases include educational institutions in the CDA’s definition of Internet computer services providers, that means that Harvard gets a get out of jail free card with respect to the inaccessibility of online content created or developed by a third party that is not altered by Harvard.
  15. The CDA relieves interactive computer service providers from liability whenever they exercise control, such as blocking and screening of third-party content.
  16. Harvard’s choices about what third-party content can appear on its website and in what form, are editorial choices falling within traditional publisher function protected by §230.
  17. While §230 immunity is an affirmative defense, a motion to dismiss still works if the dismissal is evident from the face of the complaint.
  18. The court at this point is unable to determine as a matter of law whether Harvard is not in some matter a content provider at the information on its platforms originating with student, faculty members, or other scholars.
  19. Harvard does get a get out of jail free card with respect to inaccessible content that is merely embedded online content (i.e. content hosted on a third-party server that is hyperlinked in its existing form content that is hosted on a harbor platform or website), produced or created by Harvard because Harvard remains a publisher under the communication decency act as to embedded content.
  20. Would you like to be confused? Try understanding this paragraph: “Where Harvard or someone associated with Harvard is embedding a third party’s content that Harvard or someone associated with Harvard did not create or develop in whole or in part-in other words, publishing a third party’s content-Harvard is entitled to CDA immunity and to judgment on the pleadings.”

III

Takeaways

  1. The court properly notes that when it comes to whether title III of the ADA only applies to places of public accommodation that are physical spaces, is something that is very much a debate. We have discussed the issue on our blog numerous times. As I discussed in this blog entry, it is very possible that when the Supreme Court ultimately get to this issue, they will hold that a physical place is not necessary.
  2. It probably would not be all that hard to find a nexus to a physical place with respect to online content appearing on a university’s website since colleges and universities are places of education. As a place of education, disseminating information is a critical part of what they do on their brick-and-mortar campus.
  3. This case is another example of how §504 and the ADA are not always identical. Sometimes, §504 goes further than the ADA. Sometimes, it works the other way around.
  4. One of the reasons I enjoy practicing in the area of the rights of people with disabilities, is that it interacts with all kinds of laws. You would not think of the CDA and disability accessibility going together, but in this case, it does. It also means that practicing in this area can be a bit daunting because you never know where a related law is going to come from.
  5. 47 U.S.C. §230 provides for broad immunity. After this decision, look for colleges and universities in particular that are being sued for inaccessibility of their web content to rely on this case as a matter of course. In fact, it will probably be legal malpractice for colleges and universities not to do so.
  6. It is really unclear just how far the immunity goes. For example, I link to things all the time when I do my blog. However, ¶ 20 above, where the court stated: “Where Harvard or someone associated with Harvard is embedding a third party’s content that Harvard or someone associated with Harvard did not create or develop in whole or in part-in other words, publishing a third party’s content-Harvard is entitled to CDA immunity and to judgment on the pleadings,” is really unclear. The reason this paragraph is so confusing is that most certainly students and faculty will put things up with links. Those links are not college or university’s responsibility under this decision. Does the answer change with respect to anything the college or university posts as a result of a license that it has? Does the answer change with respect to anything it puts up through the fair use doctrine? What if there is content beyond the link posted on Harvard’s site? It seems from ¶ I 6 above that Harvard is on the hook for that inaccessibility absent a showing of fundamental alteration or undue burden. However, it also seems per ¶ II 14, it may or may not have immunity for such claims.