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Supreme Court Grants Certiorari in Two ADA Cases

By Lindsay F. Wiley [Bio]

January 12, 2003 - The Supreme Court has agreed to review two cases that will affect the civil rights of disabled individuals, including many individuals suffering from chronic pain, under the Americans with Disabilities Act. In Hason v. Medical Board of California, 279 F.3d 1167 (9th Cir. 2002), cert. granted, 123 S.Ct. 561 (2002), the Court will decide the extent to which sovereign immunity protects states from claims under Title II of the ADA, which prohibits discrimination by public entities. In Wells v. Clackamas Gastroenterology Associates, P.C., 271 F.3d 903 (9th Cir. 2001) cert. granted, 123 S.Ct. 31 (2002), the Court will decide whether shareholders of a professional corporation, who are actively engaged in running the business, should count as “employees” for purposes of determining whether the corporation has enough employees to be sued under Title I of the ADA.

Erwin Chemerinsky, a law professor at the University of Southern California who represents the plaintiff in Hason has noted that the outcome of the case will affect “the whole range of what government can do in accommodations from voting to public universities.” Many commentators have noted that the current trend in the Court’s decisions has been to limit plaintiffs’ ability to sue states under the ADA and other statutes. In Board of Trustees of Univ. of Alabama v. Garrett, 531 U.S. 356 (2001), the Court decided that in enacting Title I of the ADA Congress did not validly abrogate state sovereign immunity. The result is that plaintiffs can no longer sue states for employment discrimination damages. In Garrett, the Court expressly declined to decide the sovereign immunity issue with respect to Title II.

The resolution of Wells will determine whether employees of professional corporations that are near the 15-employee threshold are protected from discrimination by the ADA. According to an attorney for the defendants, there were nearly 430,000 employers with between 15 and 19 employees in 1999. More than 3 million workers nationwide were employed by companies in this category. The Court’s resolution of this issue will affect not only ADA claims, but also claims raised under several other federal statutes triggered by a minimum number of employees, including the Age Discrimination in Employment Act and Title VII.