Garrett was a U.S. Supreme Court case on the enforcement powers of Congress under the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. It decided that Title I of the Americans with Disabilities Act was unconstitutional to the extent that it allowed private citizens to sue states for monetary damages. As a digital subscriber of Prison Legal News, you can access the full text and downloads of this and other premium content.
An official website of the United States Government Official websites use. gov A. gov belongs to an official government organization in the United States. IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE PENNSYLVANIA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS OF THE THIRD CIRCUIT; MARTIN HORN, SECRETARY OF PA DOC; PA DOC CORRECTIONAL INDUSTRIES; LINDA MORRISON, DIRECTOR, PA DOC CORRECTIONAL INDUSTRIES; EDWARD BRENNAN, SUPERINTENDENT; HAROLD BENICH, SUPV.
INDUSTRIES IN SCI ALBION; SANDRA SEAGREN, INMATE EMPLOYMENT COORDINATOR IN SCI ALBION, DEFENDANTS-APPEALS ON APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE WESTERN DISTRICT OF PENNSYLVANIA REPORT TO THE UNITED STATES AS COMPTROLLER WILLIAM R. YEOMANS Acting Assistant Attorney General JESSICA DUNSAY SILVER SETH M. Attorneys GALANTER Civil Rights Division Department of Justice P, O. CONGRESS VALIDLY REMOVED STATES' ELEVENTH AMENDMENT IMMUNITY TO PRIVATE CLAIMS UNDER TITLE II OF THE AMERICANS WITH DISABILITIES ACT 9 (A) Voting, Petitions, and Access to Courts.
Actions covered by Title II involve both equal protection and other substantive constitutional rights 32 (C). Title II is reasonably adapted to remedy and prevent unconstitutional discrimination against persons with disabilities 36 (D). In the light of the legislative dossier and the conclusions and the adapted statutory outline, Title II and its repeal are appropriate Section 5 Legislation 42 B. Congress has authority to condition the receipt of federal financial assistance on the State waiving its immunity from the Eleventh Amendment 50 C.
Section 504 is a valid exercise of purchasing power 51 III. TITLE II AND SECTION 504 MAY BE APPLIED AGAINST STATE OFFICIALS IN THEIR OFFICIAL CAPACITIES FOR POSSIBLE RELIEF EVEN IF CONGRESS DID NOT VALIDLY WAIVE STATES' IMMUNITY 61 Adenv, Younger, 129 Cal. By Educ. Iowa 198 66 Honigv, Cal Students.
Dist. Schs. By Colo. By Brooksv, Flaherty, 902 F, 2d 250 (4th Cir.
Passim Title VII, 42 U, S, C. STATEMENT OF JURISDICTION OF THE SUBJECT MATTER OF THE APPELLATE JURISDICTION OF McAleese, Plaintiff-Appellant The Eleventh Amendment does not preclude this action brought by a private plaintiff under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act to Remedy Discrimination. against people with disabilities. ARGUMENT I CONGRESS VALIDLY REMOVED STATES' ELEVENTH AMENDMENT IMMUNITY TO PRIVATE LAWSUITS UNDER TITLE II OF THE AMERICANS WITH DISABILITIES ACT (B).
Actions covered by Title II imply both equal protection and other substantive constitutional rights C. Title II is reasonably adapted to remedy and prevent unconstitutional discrimination against persons with disabilities, therefore, Title II requires more than the Constitution only to the extent that some disability discrimination may be rational for constitutional purposes, but unreasonable under the statute. This margin of legal protection does not redefine the constitutional law in question. On the other hand, legal protection is necessary to enforce the constitutional norm of the courts by adopting unconstitutional conduct that would otherwise not be detected in court, remedying the continuing effects of previous unconstitutional discrimination and deterring future constitutional violations.
While the line between measures that remedy or prevent unconstitutional actions and measures that make a substantial change in applicable law is not easy to discern, Flores, 521 U, S. In 519, Title II is on the corrective and prophylactic side of that line. Second, to the extent that the adaptation requirement requires alterations in some government policies and practices, it is an appropriate enforcement mechanism for many of the same reasons that a disparate impact ban is. Title II simply ensures that the refusal to accommodate a person with a disability is genuinely based on an unreasonable cost or actual inability to accommodate, and not on anything other than discomfort with the disability or unfounded concern about accommodation costs.
This prophylactic response is consistent with the problem of irrational discrimination of the State denying access to benefits and services for which the State has determined that persons with disabilities are qualified or that the State provides to all its citizens (such as education, police). protection and civil courts). It makes special sense in the context of public services, where a subsequent judicial remedy may be of limited use to an individual given the difficulty of remedying unconstitutional denials of intangible but important rights, such as the right to vote, to a fair trial or to educational opportunity. By establishing prophylactic requirements, Congress provided additional mechanisms for individuals to avoid irreparable injury and ensure full vindication of constitutional rights.
But a high burden of justification is not necessarily an unacceptable effort to redefine constitutional rights; it may be, as is the case here and under Title VII, an appropriate means of eradicating hidden animosity and remedying and preventing widespread discrimination that is unconstitutional by virtue of justice. defined rules. In light of the legislative record and findings and adapted statutory outline, Title II and its abrogation are appropriateSection 5 Legislation The record compiled by Congress and the conclusions it made suffice to support the substantive standard of Title II as appropriate the Fourteenth Amendment legislation applicable to States and localities. See, for example, g.
Since some school districts and law enforcement officials are beneficiaries of the Eleventh Amendment, Garrett, 121 S. In 965, and that some local practices are conducted at the behest of States, evidence before Congress on the treatment of persons with disabilities by education, law enforcement, voting and other officials is relevant to evaluating the legislative record of Congress on state violations, because the demarcation is unclear aside, in this report we have provided evidence before Congress concerning state and local governments. But even limited to evidence relating to States acting through their own agencies, there is sufficient basis to sustain Congress's determination that States engage in an unconstitutional pattern of conduct. Section 2000d-7 makes it clear unambiguously that Congress intended states to be willing to sue in federal court under Section 504 (and other federal non-discrimination laws linked to federal financial assistance) if they accept federal funding.
Code would have known that after the effective date of Section 2000d-7 she could be sued in federal court for violations of Section 504 if she accepted federal funds. Therefore, Section 2000d-7 incorporates exactly the kind of unambiguous condition discussed by the Court in Atascadero, placing states on express notice that part of the contract to receive federal funds was the requirement that they give consent to sue in federal court for alleged violations of Section 504 for those agencies that received financial assistance. Congress has authority to condition receipt of federal financial assistance on the state waiving its immunity from Eleventh Amendment C. Section 504 is a valid exercise of purchasing power.
These cases represent the proposition that Congress has an interest in avoiding the use of its funds to support, directly or indirectly, programs that discriminate against or deny benefits and services to qualified persons on the basis of race, gender and disability. Therefore, compliance with Section 504 is a valid condition for receiving all federal financial assistance. Because this interest extends to all federal funds, Congress drafted Title VI, Title IX, and Section 504 to generally apply to all federal financial assistance. The purposes articulated by Congress in enacting Title VI, purposes equally attributable to Title IX and Section 504, were to avoid the need to attach non-discrimination provisions each time a federal assistance program was submitted to Congress, and to avoid the piecemeal application of the non-discrimination requirement discrimination if Congress did not place the provision in each grant statute.
Certainly, there is no distinction of constitutional magnitude between a non-discrimination provision attached to each assignment and a single provision that applies to all federal expenditures. While accepting that coercion is an independent and justiciable concept, any argument that Section 504 is coercive would be inconsistent with Supreme Court decisions demonstrating that states may have to make difficult or even unrealistic decisions about whether they should receive federal benefits without conditions. become unconstitutionally coercive. These cases demonstrate that the federal government can require states to comply with federal conditions or make the difficult decision of losing federal funds from many different long-standing programs (North Carolina), losing all federal funds (Mergens), or even losing the ability to regulate certain areas (FERC), without cross the line of coercion.
Therefore, the option imposed by Section 504 is not constitutionally coercive. State officials are constantly forced to make difficult decisions regarding competing needs for limited funds. While it is not always easy to refuse federal generosity, every department or agency of the state, under the control of state officials, is free to decide whether it will accept federal funds with Section 504 and the attached exemption clause, or simply refuse funds. Watch Grove City Coll.
In 575; Kansas, 214 F, 3d at 1203-1204 (In this context, a difficult choice is still a choice, and a tempting offer is nothing more than an offer. If Kansas considers the requirements of ** * to be so unpleasant, it is ultimately free to refuse both the terms and the funding, no matter how difficult that choice is 3.In a nutshell, Kansas options have been increased, not limited, by the supply of more federal dollars. Both prospective and retrospective relief involve Eleventh Amendment concerns, but the availability of prospective relief of the type granted in Ex parte Young brings the Supremacy Clause to life. Resources designed to end a continuing violation of federal law are necessary to vindicate the federal interest in ensuring the supremacy of that law.
green v. Article 757 (the established rules) provides ample means to correct current violations of the law and to vindicate the interests that animate the Supremacy Clause. Unlike IGRA, Congress did not state an intention to prohibit a lawsuit against state officials in their official capacity for injunctive relief in either Section 504 or Title II. By arguing otherwise, defendants misunderstand the duties and remedies of these statutes.
If a lawsuit was brought to prohibit such a State policy or practice, it would be irrelevant for the purposes of the interim measure if the person sued the State itself or the official or employee in his or her official duties. Under the rules of fairness, if the State were sued and ordered, all its officials and agents would be automatically covered by the court order. If a defendant official in his official capacity was the defendant, a court order issued against him also binds other government officials as if the lawsuit had been filed against the State. Johnson, 194 F, 3d 1149, 1163 (tenth Cir.
The old rule that a lawsuit against an official in his official capacity is the same as a lawsuit against the State (except for the purposes of sovereign immunity) is based on this same understanding. Lawsuits for official capacity (* *) generally represent just another way of alleging an action against an entity of which an official is an agent. This is not a lawsuit against the official personally, since the real interested party is the entity. Kentucky.
Thus, by definition, officials in their official functions are no more free to violate Title II than the entity itself. This is consistent with the legislative history of Title II, which states that Congress intended to have the full range of resources available. In fact, the Report of the Judicial Committee of the House of Representatives cited as an example of the remedies available under Title II the decision of the Eighth Circuit in Mienerv. Missouri, 673 F, 2d 969 (198), which held that an implied private right of action was available under Section 504 when officials were sued in their official duties.
Therefore, there is no evidence that Congress intended to prevent the availability of precautionary measures. Walker's raison d'être is not persuasive. Instead, this Court must follow most appellate courts that have held after the Seminole Tribe that individuals could rely on Ex parte Young to enforce Title II and Section 504, as well as Title VI, against state officials. Valdez, 186 F, 3d 1280, 1287 (10° Cir.
Miller, 170 F, 3d 641, 646-647 (6th Cir. Wilson, 124 F, 3d 1019, 1025-1026 (9th Cir. The Supreme Court has frequently recognized the importance of federal courts being open to enforce and interpret federal rights. Idahov.
Coeur d'Alene Tribe of Idaho, 521 US, S. As there is no evidence that Congress intended to prevent Section 504 and Title II claims from being prosecuted against state officials in their official capacity, the district court erred in dismissing the injunctions in this lawsuit on grounds of immunity from the Eleventh Amendment. Bart DeLone Deputy Attorney General Office of the Attorney General Appellate Litigation Section 15th Floor Strawberry Square Harrisburg, PA 17120 Thomas J. Weiner 660 USX Tower 600 Grant Street Pittsburgh, PA 15219 Mark Murphy Disability Bill 1901 Law and Finance Building 429 Fourth Avenue Pittsburgh, PA 15219 SETH M.
Attorney for the Department of Justice at GALANTER P, O. The ADA has been the subject of numerous lower court decisions and the Supreme Court has decided 20 ADA cases. Arlene Mayerson is the author of the parts of the article that deal with the American historical analysis of the wording of the ADA, as well as the equality model under which the ADA was written in the United States. Therefore, the other brief writers and I on the constitutional cases of the ADA are reevaluating the ADA and its history from this perspective.
The findings of the ADA Amendments Act include statements indicating that Supreme Court decisions in Sutton and Toyota, as well as lower court cases, have reduced and limited the ADA from what Congress intended. The Supreme Court addressed issues related to prisoners under the ADA in Yeskey, holding that state prisons fall within the legal definition of a public entity of the ADA, but did not address constitutional issues. Georgia,52 raised the question of whether Congress had validly abrogated state immunity from claims for damages under Title II of the ADA in situations involving accommodations for prisoners with disabilities, but the Court resolved the case on narrower grounds, arguing only that Title II of the ADA created a cause of action for damages against states for conduct that actually violated the Fourteenth Amendment. Since the 15-employee limitation language of the ADA parallels that of Title VII, it is likely that a court will interpret the ADA requirement in the same way.
The ADA Amendments Act states that the purposes of the legislation are to realize the objectives of the ADA of eliminating discrimination and providing “clear, robust, consistent and enforceable rules that address discrimination” by restoring a broad scope of protection available under the ADA. Most agreed that cruise ships do not need to comply with the ADA if the amendments conflict with international legal obligations, since the ADA only requires easily accessible accommodations. The fact that the ADA defines a qualified person as one who can perform the essential functions of the job with or without reasonable accommodations was seen as a key distinction between the ADA and the Social Security Act. The ADA Amendments Act also provides in an interpretation rule under Title V of the ADA that an entity covered under Title I,12, a public entity under Title II, or a person operating a place of public accommodation under Title III, need not provide a reasonable accommodation or reasonable modification to the policies.
, practices or procedures to a person who meets the definition of disability only by virtue of what is considered to be part of the definition. . .
