Board of Trustees v. Garrett, 531 U.S. 356 

Supreme Court of the United States

2001

Chapter

3

Title

The Scope of Congresss Powers

Page

307

Topic

Congresss Enforcement Power under the Reconstruction Amendments

Quick Notes

Garrett (Pl - was the nursing director at the University of Alabama in Birmingham Hospital. While she was undergoing cancer therapy, her supervisor required her to surrender her high-level position in exchange for a lower-paying one. She sued the Board of Trustees (Df - for disability discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

First Step Identify the scope of the constitutional right at issue

o         Identify with some precision the scope of the constitutional right at issue.

Inquire Examine section 1 limitation

o    The Inquiry requires us to examine the limitations section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment places upon States' treatment of the disabled.

o    Look to prior decisions under the Equal Protection Clause dealing with this issue.

 (Rational-basis Review)

o         Legislation or State actions that treats people with disabilities differently from people without disabilities must satisfy only the minimum rational-basis review applicable to general social and economic legislation.

States not required to make accommodations, If actions are rational

o         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.

Step 2 Example whether Congress identified a history and pattern of unconstitutional employment discrimination by the States against the disabled

Rational Basis Test

o    A principle whereby a court will uphold a law as valid under the Equal Protection Clause or Due Process Clause if it bears a reasonable relationship to the attainment of some legitimate governmental objective.

Book Name

Constitutional Law : Stone, Seidman, Sunstein, Tushnet.  ISBN:  978-0-7355-7719-0

Issue

o         Whether a state government can be held civilly liable for disability discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act?  No.  If discrimination exists, there must be a rational-basis review, where the States shows that their actions towards the individual are rational.

Procedure

Appellant

o         United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit held that the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) validly abrogated the States' immunity under the Eleventh Amendment

Supreme

o         Reversed

Facts

Discussion

Key Phrases

Rules

Pl Garrett

Df Board of Trustees

Description

o         Garrett (Pl - was the nursing director at the University of Alabama in Birmingham Hospital.

o         While she was undergoing cancer therapy, her supervisor required her to surrender her high-level position in exchange for a lower-paying one.

o         She sued the Board of Trustees (Df - for disability discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990

o         The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) prohibits certain employers, including the states, from discriminating against a qualified individual with a disability.

o         The ADA requires employers to make reasonable accommodations for disabled workers.

o         Making facilities accessible to and usable by individuals with disabilities to perform jobs.

[Chief Justice Rehnquist]

Section I

City of Boerne Court defines substance of constitutional guarantees

o         Confirmed the long-settled principle that it is the responsibility of this Court, not Congress, to define the substance of constitutional guarantees.

Must exhibit congruence and proportionality

o         Section 5 legislation reaching beyond the scope of section 1's actual guarantees must exhibit "congruence and proportionality between the injury to be prevented or remedied and the means adopted to that end."

Section II

First Step Identify the scope of the constitutional right at issue

o         Identify with some precision the scope of the constitutional right at issue.

Inquire Examine section 1 limitation

o    The Inquiry requires us to examine the limitations 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment places upon States' treatment of the disabled.

o    Look to prior decisions under the Equal Protection Clause dealing with this issue.

In Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Center, Inc.,  (Rational-basis)

o         Concluding that such legislation that treats people with disabilities differently from people without disabilities must satisfy only the minimum rational-basis review applicable to general social and economic legislation.

States not required to make accommodations, If actions are rational

o         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.

Job Qualifications Do Not make allowances

o         They could quite hard headedly --  and perhaps hardheartedly -- hold to job-qualification requirements which do not make allowance for the disabled.

Special accommodations have to come from positive law

o         If special accommodations for the disabled are to be required, they have to come from positive law and not through the Equal Protection Clause.

Section III

Step 2 Example whether Congress identified a history and pattern of unconstitutional employment discrimination by the States against the disabled

Court Fails to show a pattern

Garret Contends Inquiry should extend to cities and counties

o         All of these are "state actors" for  purposes of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Court Eleventh Amendment

o         The Eleventh Amendment does not extend its immunity to units of local government.

Court Entities are subject to private claims for damages

o         These 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.

o         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.

Board of Trustees Cite disability cases that did not involve State Activities

Court Even if true, fall short of a pattern of unconstitutional discrimination based upon section 5 legislation.

o         Congress found that "some 43,000,000 Americans have one or more physical or mental disabilities."

o         States alone employed more than 4.5 million people.

o         Congress assembled only such minimal evidence of unconstitutional state  discrimination in employment against the disabled

Court Rights and Remedy Concerns created by the ADA

o         The rights and remedies created by the ADA against the States would raise the same sort of concerns as to congruence and proportionality as were found in City of Boerne.

For example,

o    It would be entirely rational (and therefore constitutional) for a state employer to conserve scarce financial resources by hiring employees who are able to use existing facilities, the ADA requires employers to "make existing facilities used by employees readily accessible to and usable by individuals with disabilities."

Court ADA does not except a reasonable accommodation requirement

o         The ADA does except employers from the "reasonable accommodation" requirement where the employer "can demonstrate that the accommodation would impose an undue hardship on the operation of the business of such covered entity."

Court Accommodation requirement far exceeds what is constitutionally required

o         The 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 employer.

Court Requires Employer to prove it would suffer from a burden

o         The Act also makes it the employer's duty to prove that it would suffer such a burden, instead of requiring (as the Constitution does) that the complaining party negate reasonable bases for the employer's decision.

Court Requirement for private individuals to recovery money damages against States

1.     There must be a pattern of discrimination by the States which violates the Fourteenth Amendment, and

2.     The remedy imposed by Congress must be congruent and proportional to the targeted violation.

REVERSED

[Justice Breyer, Justice Stevens, Justice Souter, Justice Ginsburg] - DISSENT

Section 5 Grants Congress the Power to Enforce and equal protection guarantee

o         Section 5, however, grants Congress the "power to enforce, by appropriate legislation" the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection guarantee.

o         In my view, Congress reasonably could have concluded that the remedy before us constitutes an "appropriate" way to enforce this basic equal protection requirement.

Section I

Concerning Minimal Evidence Requirement

o         Congress compiled a vast legislative record documenting massive, society-wide discrimination against persons with disabilities.

o         Information was presented at 13 Congressional hearings.

o         Experience Gathered over 40 years.

o         Congress had a specific task force to assess the need for this legislation.

o         The task force held hearings in every State.

Discrimination by private persons and local governments

o         This discrimination implicates State Governments.

o         State agencies form part of the same larger society.

o         These agencies are not immune from stereotypic assumptions and the pattern of purposeful unequal treatment that Congress found prevalent.

Equal Protection Clause Obligation

o         Applies to state and local governments alike.

300 Examples of discrimination by State Government

1.     impossible to obtain a state job,

2.     to retain state employment,

3.     to use the public transportation that was readily available to others in order to get to work, or

4.     to obtain a public education, which is often a prerequisite to obtaining employment.

5.     State-imposed barriers also frequently made it difficult or impossible for people to vote, to enter a public building, to access important government services, such as calling for emergency assistance, and to find a place to live due to a pattern of irrational zoning decisions similar to the discrimination that we held unconstitutional in Cleburne.

Section II

o         Congress is not a judicial body.

o         Congress is compelled to reach general conclusions to determine appropriate legislation.

o         The Court should not hold Congresss section 5 power hostage to formal court rules.

Congress is being held to a strict, judicially CREATED evidentiary standard

o         There is simply no reason to require Congress, seeking to determine facts relevant to the exercise of its 5 authority, to adopt rules or presumptions that reflect a court's institutional limitations.

Congress can gather facts and find an appropriate remedy

o         Unlike courts, Congress can readily gather facts from across the Nation, assess the magnitude of a problem, and more easily find an appropriate remedy.

o         Unlike courts, Congress directly reflects public attitudes and beliefs, enabling Congress better to understand where, and to what extent, refusals to accommodate a disability amount to behavior that is callous or unreasonable to the point of lacking constitutional justification.

o         Unlike judges, Members of Congress can directly obtain information from constituents who have first-hand experience with discrimination and related issues.

Section IV

o         The Courts harsh review of Congress is similar to the limitation that it ONCE imposed upon Congresss Commerce Clause Power.

o         This type of discrimination is not against a PARTICULAR race or gender.

o         It does not threaten a basic constitutionally protected liberty.

o         The legislation does not discriminate against anyone.

o         It does not pose any threat to liberty.

o         Federalism is overridden by power to enforce the Civil War Amendments

Rules

11th Amendment XI (Suits Against a State)

o    The judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by citizens of another state, or by citizens or subjects of any foreign state.

11th Amendment  (In other words)

o    The 11th Amendment says, in brief, that the states are immune from being sued for money damages by private citizens in federal court. 

o    Congress has the power to override this state immunity when it does so by using its 13th, 14th or 15th Amendment remedial powers to create a valid remedy against state violations of the rights protected by those amendments.

Class Notes

14th Amendment

14th Amendment XIV (Privileges and Immunities, Due Process, Equal Protection, Apportionment of Representatives, Civil War Disqualification and Debt (1868))

Section 1.  (Citizenship, Equal Protection Clause)

o   All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.

o   No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States;

o   nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law;

o   nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Section 2.  (21 years hold to vote)

o   Representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a state, or the members of the legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such state, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such state.

Section 3.  (have to take constitutional oath)

o   No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Section 4.

o   The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.

o   But neither the United States nor any state shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

Section 5. (Enforce Legislation)

• The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.