Board of Trustees of the University of Alabama v. Garrett

Facts

The plaintiffs were Milton Ash and Patricia Garrett, employees of the University of Alabama school system. Both were disabled under the definition of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA): Ash was a security guard who had a lifelong history of severe asthma, and Garrett was a nurse who had been diagnosed with breast cancer requiring time-consuming radiation and chemotherapy treatments. Both alleged that they had been discriminated against at their jobs; the University had refused to assign Ash to duties that would alleviate his asthma, and insisted on transferring Garrett due to her absences. Ash and Garrett filed a suit in federal court against the University of Alabama for damages, arguing that the University had violated Title I of the ADA, the part of the ADA prohibiting discrimination in employment on the basis of disability.

The University of Alabama responded with a motion to dismiss on the grounds that the Eleventh Amendment prohibited the suit. The United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama dismissed both cases on this ground, but the Eleventh Circuit reversed, holding that Congress had expressly abrogated the sovereign immunity of the states.

Issue

The issue was whether Congress could abrogate the immunity of the states under its Fourteenth Amendment power to enforce the Equal Protection Clause.

Result

The majority opinion stated that Congress, in enacting the ADA, had satisfied the requirement that it make clear its intention to abrogate state sovereign immunity and allow states to be sued for damages under the Fourteenth Amendment. However, the majority opinion also stated that this part of the ADA lacked the "congruence and proportionality" required when Congress exercises its enforcement power under the Fourteenth Amendment, citing City of Boerne v. Flores.

Under the Equal Protection Clause, discrimination against people with disabilities is analyzed using "rational basis" scrutiny. If the discrimination has a rational basis, it is constitutional. In Garrett, the Court held that Congress (like the judiciary) was required to use rational basis review of state action, with its presumptions favoring constitutionality. The Court decided that the legislative record of the ADA, "fails to show that Congress did in fact identify a pattern of irrational state discrimination in employment against the disabled."

The Garrett Court stated that the "reasonable accommodation" requirement of the ADA law failed the congruence and proportionality test even though there was a hardship exception to the accommodation requirement. The Court said that disability discrimination is rational in that hiring non-disabled employees would conserve scarce financial resources by avoiding the need for costly reasonable accommodations, and that states have rational reasons for violating the part of the ADA law banning policies that have a disparate impact on the disabled. Even in cases of racial discrimination, where the courts apply a different standard of scrutiny to government action than they do in rational basis review, evidence of disparate impact "alone is insufficient even where the Fourteenth Amendment subjects state action to strict scrutiny." The Court had held in Village of Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Corp. that disparate impact was not proof of discrimination based on "race, color or national origin," which triggers strict scrutiny.

The Court said that the burden of proof was upon those who alleged that a state action toward the disabled was irrational.

The Court mentioned the government's argument that "the inquiry as to unconstitutional discrimination should extend not only to States themselves, but to units of local governments, such as cities and counties." The Court admitted that local governments "are 'state actors' for purposes of the Fourteenth Amendment," but added that "[t]hese entities are subject to private claims for damages under the ADA without Congress' ever having to rely on § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment to render them so. It would make no sense to consider constitutional violations on their part, as well as by the States themselves, when only the States are the beneficiaries of the Eleventh Amendment." As the Court said:

States are not required by the Fourteenth Amendment to make special accommodations for the disabled, so long as their actions towards such individuals are rational. They could quite hardheadedly – and perhaps hardheartedly – hold to job-qualification requirements which do not make allowance for the disabled. If special accommodations for the disabled are to be required, they have to come from positive law and not through the Equal Protection Clause.

The ADA, by allowing states to be sued for damages by private plaintiffs when the state fails to provide reasonable accommodations, thus provided significantly more Fourteenth Amendment protection for people with disabilities than was allowed by Boerne. This level of protection, the Court held, was not "congruent and proportional" to the wrong (i.e. discrimination against people with disabilities). Hence the ADA did not constitutionally abrogate the states' sovereign immunity.

Garrett's scope, however, should not be overstated: while states, under Garrett, are not subject to money damages for violations of Title I of the ADA, states that violate the ADA are still subject to prospective injunctive relief under the Ex parte Young doctrine.

Dissent

The Court split 5-4, with Justice Stephen Breyer filing a dissenting opinion in which he was joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The dissent stated the following about rational basis review:

Congress found that “[t]wo-thirds of all disabled Americans between the age of 16 and 64 [were] not working at all,” even though a large majority wanted to, and were able to, work productively. And Congress found that this discrimination flowed in significant part from “stereotypic assumptions” as well as purposeful unequal treatment.” ...

The problem with the Court’s approach is that neither the “burden of proof” that favors States nor any other rule of restraint applicable to judges applies to Congress when it exercises its § 5 power. "Limitations stemming from the nature of the judicial process … have no application to Congress." Rational–basis review—with its presumptions favoring constitutionality—is "a paradigm of judicial restraint." And the Congress of the United States is not a lower court. (Citations omitted)

Regarding "congruence and proportionality", Justice Breyer said that City of Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Center, Inc and Katzenbach v. Morgan were precedents that require deference by the Court, not Congress. As Breyer said:

I recognize nonetheless that this statute imposes a burden upon States in that it removes their Eleventh Amendment protection from suit, thereby subjecting them to potential monetary liability. Rules for interpreting § 5 that would provide States with special protection, however, run counter to the very object of the Fourteenth Amendment. By its terms, that Amendment prohibits States from denying their citizens equal protection of the laws. Hence “principles of federalism that might otherwise be an obstacle to congressional authority are necessarily overridden by the power to enforce the Civil War Amendments ‘by appropriate legislation.’ Those Amendments were specifically designed as an expansion of federal power and an intrusion on state sovereignty.” (Citations omitted)