State Workers Not Protected under the ADA Employment Provisions

State Claims Immunity from ADA Lawsuits
Court Debates Eleventh and Fourteenth Amendments
Federal Employment Laws May Be in Question, but State Laws Still Apply

State employees may be out of luck when it comes to suing under the ADA and other federal employment laws.  Supreme Court decisions have found that at least three of these laws cannot be applied to state employers.  But, even so, don’t think that state governments have “carte blanche” to discriminate.

The Supreme Court disappointed employee rights advocates once again in its latest decision limiting Congress’ power to regulate states as employers.  According to the Court’s decision in Board of Trustees of Univ. of Alabama v. Garrett, No. 99-1240 (2/21/01), states cannot be sued by individuals under Title I of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).  This decision is the third by the Court in the last two years finding that federal employment laws cannot be applied to state employers.  This same Court found that employees could not sue states under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) in 1999 or under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) in 2000.  But make no mistake:  These decisions don’t give public employers a free pass to discriminate or underpay employees.  Even if federal laws do not apply, states still must comply with their own state employment laws.

State Claims Immunity from ADA Lawsuits

The Garrett case combined two separate ADA suits filed against Alabama state employers.  In the first suit, a registered nurse at the University of Alabama in Birmingham Hospital claimed that she was regarded as disabled because of her history of breast cancer.  The second case involved a correctional officer employed by the Alabama Department of Youth Services who claimed the department did not accommodate his chronic asthma.  The district court combined the cases and ruled that Congress exceeded its authority by allowing individuals to sue state employers for monetary damages under the ADA.  The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed and reversed the decision finding that the ADA was properly applied to states.  The Supreme Court agreed to consider the case to resolve a split among the Circuit Courts of Appeals.  On one hand, the Second, Fifth, Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh Circuits determined that individuals may sue a state for monetary damages in federal court under the ADA; on the other hand, the Fourth and Eight Circuits found that the Constitution did not permit such lawsuits.

Court Debates Eleventh and Fourteenth Amendments

The Court began its analysis by looking at the Eleventh Amendment of the United States Constitution, which bans lawsuits against a state by citizens of another state, and recent decisions by the Court that extend that prohibition to citizens suing their own state.  According to the Court, “The ultimate guarantee of the Eleventh Amendment is that nonconsenting States may not be sued by private individuals in federal court.”  However, the Court recognized that this immunity is not absolute and that Congress may nullify states’ immunity if it meets two criteria.  First, Congress must show that it “unequivocally” intended to abrogate (or abolish) the immunity.  This criterion was not at issue since Congress included a section to the ADA (found in 42 U.S.C. §12202) which specifically asserts that states are not immune under the Eleventh Amendment from actions in federal or state court for violations of the ADA.

Second, Congress must have acted “pursuant to a valid grant of constitutional authority.”  In particular, the Court pointed out that the Eleventh Amendment immunity is “necessarily limited” by the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment (prohibiting states from denying “any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws”).  Congress may enforce that clause by enacting “appropriate legislation.”  However, the Court also found that in order to allow private individuals to sue for monetary damages, Congress must be able to show a pattern of discrimination by the states that violates the Equal Protection Clause.  In addition, any remedy imposed by Congress must be “congruent and proportional to the targeted violation.” 

According to the Court, Congress failed on both of these counts.  The Court determined that the legislative record of the ADA does not show that Congress identified a pattern of state discrimination against disabled job applicants or employees.  While Congress assembled a record showing societal discrimination against the disabled, the Court found that “the great majority of [those] incidents did not deal with the activities of States.”  In addition, even if the Court could “squeeze out of these examples a pattern of unconstitutional discrimination by the States,” the extensive rights and remedies provided by the ADA are not “congruent and proportional to the targeted violation.”  For example, the reasonable accommodation duty “far exceeds what is constitutionally required in that it makes unlawful a range of alternate responses that would be reasonable but would fall short of imposing an ‘undue burden’ upon the [state] employer.”  Based on this analysis, the Court reversed the Eleventh Circuit to find that individuals cannot sue state employers for monetary damages under Title I of the ADA.

Federal Employment Laws May Be in Question, but State Laws Still Apply

This case is the third Supreme Court decision in the last two years calling into question the applicability of federal employment laws to states.  In June 1999, the Court in Alden v. Maine, 527 U.S. 706 (1999), found that the FLSA could not be enforced against states without their consent.  In January 2000, the Court determined in Kimel v. Florida Bd. of Regents, 528 U.S. 62 (2000), that state employees cannot sue for monetary damages under the ADEA.  And questions about the enforceability of the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) against state employers have now arisen in the lower courts.  Five federal Circuit Courts of Appeals (the Second, Third, Fifth, Sixth, and Eleventh) have found that the FMLA should not apply to state employers.

So what do these decisions mean for state employers?  You can draw the following conclusions from the cases:

1.  States cannot be sued by individuals (such as employees) under the FLSA, ADEA, and Title I of the ADA.  Note, however, that Garrett only dealt with the ADA’s employment provisions; it did not address Title II (prohibiting state and local governments from discriminating against the disabled in the provision of services) or Title III (requiring public accommodations and commercial facilities to be readily accessible to the disabled).

2.  The decisions are limited only to state governments and their agencies and do not apply to local governments and counties.  These entities are not protected by the Eleventh Amendment.  Of course, private employers also are not affected.

3.  As a practical matter, state employers still must comply with state wage and hour and discrimination laws.  Almost every state has its own laws that protect substantially the same rights (and in some cases more rights) as the federal FLSA, ADEA, and ADA that specifically apply to state employers.  Thus, state employees can sue under these laws in state courts.

4.  State employers located in the federal Circuits that have ruled the FMLA does not now apply do not have to comply with that law.  Thus, state employers located in the Second Circuit (Connecticut, New York, and Vermont), the Third Circuit (Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and the Virgin Islands), the Fifth Circuit (Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas), the Sixth Circuit (Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee), and the Eleventh Circuit (Alabama, Florida, and Georgia) are not covered by the FMLA, but state employers in the other eight Circuits must comply.  As with the FLSA, ADA, and ADEA decisions, local and county governments are not affected by these rulings. 

Interestingly, in the past Title VII of the Civil Rights Act (prohibiting discrimination based on race, sex, religion, ethnicity, and color) has been found to apply to state governments.  However, the Supreme Court has not reviewed that law’s coverage using the Constitutional arguments applied to these recent decisions.  Thus, there is some possibility that the Title VII issue is ripe for a challenge using the Supreme Court’s latest findings, although no cases are currently pending before the Court.