Board of Trustees of the University of Alabama v. Garrett

531 U.S. 356

Case Year: 2001

Case Ruling: 5-4, Reversed

Opinion Justice: Rehnquist

FACTS

An issue that has come before the Court several times in recent years is congressional legislation that allows citizens to sue state governments. A five-justice majority has consistently acted to protect states against such lawsuits over the objections of a four-justice minority that believes Congress should be given broad latitude to expand access to the courts. Board of Trustees of the University of Alabama v. Garrett (2001) continues this line of cases. In Garrett the dispute centered on provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA).

The ADA prohibits certain employers, including state governments, from “discriminat[ing] against a qualified individual with a disability because of the disability of such individual in regard to job application procedures, the hiring, advancement, or discharge of employees, employee compensation, job training, and other terms, conditions, and privileges of employment.” To this end, the act requires employers to “mak[e] reasonable accommodations to the known physical or mental limitations of an otherwise qualified individual with a disability who is an applicant or employee, unless [the employer] can demonstrate that the accommodation would impose an undue hardship on the operation of the [employer’s] business.” The act also prohibits employers from “utilizing standards, criteria, or methods of administration ... that have the effect of discrimination on the basis of disability.”

Respondent Patricia Garrett, a registered nurse, was employed as the Director of Nursing, OB/GYN/Neonatal Services, for the University of Alabama in Birmingham Hospital. In 1994 Garrett was diagnosed with breast cancer and subsequently underwent a series of treatments that required her to take substantial leave from work. When Garrett returned to work in July 1995, her supervisor informed her that she would have to give up her position as director. Garrett then applied for and received a transfer to another, lower-paying position as a nurse manager.

Respondent Milton Ash worked as a security officer for the Alabama Department of Youth Services. When he took the job, Ash informed the department that he suffered from chronic asthma and that his doctor recommended that he avoid carbon monoxide and cigarette smoke. He requested that the department modify his duties to minimize his exposure to these substances. Ash was later diagnosed with sleep apnea, a debilitating sleep disorder, and requested--again based on his doctor’s recommendation--that he be reassigned to daytime shifts. The department granted none of the requested relief. Shortly after Ash filed a discrimination claim with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, he noticed that his performance evaluations were lower than those he had received on previous occasions.

Garrett and Ash filed separate lawsuits in federal district court, both seeking money damages under the ADA. The Alabama agencies employing them moved for summary judgment, claiming that the ADA exceeds Congress’s authority to abrogate the state’s Eleventh Amendment immunity. In a single opinion disposing of both cases, the district court agreed with the agencies’ position and granted their motions for summary judgment. The Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit reversed, holding that the ADA validly abrogates the states’ Eleventh Amendment immunity.

 

CHIEF JUSTICE REHNQUIST DELIVERED THE OPINION OF THE COURT.

We decide here whether employees of the State of Alabama may recover money damages by reason of the State’s failure to comply with the provisions of Title I of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA or Act). We hold that such suits are barred by the Eleventh Amendment....

The Eleventh Amendment provides:

“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.”

Although by its terms the Amendment applies only to suits against a State by citizens of another State, our cases have extended the Amendment’s applicability to suits by citizens against their own States. See Kimel v. Florida Bd. of Regents(2000); College Savings Bank v. Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Ed. Expense Bd (1999); Seminole Tribe of Fla. v. Florida (1996);Hans v. Louisiana (1890). The ultimate guarantee of the Eleventh Amendment is that nonconsenting States may not be sued by private individuals in federal court.

We have recognized, however, that Congress may abrogate the States’ Eleventh Amendment immunity when it both unequivocally intends to do so and “act[s] pursuant to a valid grant of constitutional authority.”... The question, then, is whether Congress acted within its constitutional authority by subjecting the States to suits in federal court for money damages under the ADA.

Congress may not, of course, base its abrogation of the States’ Eleventh Amendment immunity upon the powers enumerated in Article I. See Kimel, (“Under our firmly established precedent then, if the [Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967] rests solely on Congress’ Article I commerce power, the private petitioners in today’s cases cannot maintain their suits against their state employers”); Seminole Tribe, (“The Eleventh Amendment restricts the judicial power under Article III, and Article I cannot be used to circumvent the constitutional limitations placed upon federal jurisdiction”); Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Ed. Expense Bd. v. College Savings Bank (1999); Alden v. Maine (1999). In Fitzpatrick v. Bitzer (1976), however, we held that “the Eleventh Amendment, and the principle of state sovereignty which it embodies, are necessarily limited by the enforcement provisions of §5 of the Fourteenth Amendment.” As a result, we concluded, Congress may subject nonconsenting States to suit in federal court when it does so pursuant to a valid exercise of its §5 power. Our cases have adhered to this proposition. Accordingly, the ADA can apply to the States only to the extent that the statute is appropriate §5 legislation.

Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment provides, in relevant part:

“No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment grants Congress the power to enforce the substantive guarantees contained in §1 by enacting “appropriate legislation.” Congress is not limited to mere legislative repetition of this Court’s constitutional jurisprudence. “Rather, Congress’ power ‘to enforce’ the Amendment includes the authority both to remedy and to deter violation of rights guaranteed thereunder by prohibiting a somewhat broader swath of conduct, including that which is not itself forbidden by the Amendment’s text.”...

The first step in applying these now familiar principles is to identify with some precision the scope of the constitutional right at issue. Here, that inquiry requires us to examine the limitations §1 of the Fourteenth Amendment places upon States’ treatment of the disabled. As we did last Term in Kimel, we look to our prior decisions under the Equal Protection Clause dealing with this issue.

In Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Center, Inc. (1985), we considered an equal protection challenge to a city ordinance requiring a special use permit for the operation of a group home for the mentally retarded. The specific question before us was whether the Court of Appeals had erred by holding that mental retardation qualified as a “quasi-suspect” classification under our equal protection jurisprudence. We answered that question in the affirmative, concluding instead that such legislation incurs only the minimum “rational-basis” review applicable to general social and economic legislation....

Under rational-basis review, where a group possesses “distinguishing characteristics relevant to interests the State has the authority to implement,” a State’s decision to act on the basis of those differences does not give rise to a constitutional violation. “Such a classification cannot run afoul of the Equal Protection Clause if there is a rational relationship between the disparity of treatment and some legitimate governmental purpose.” Moreover, the State need not articulate its reasoning at the moment a particular decision is made. Rather, the burden is upon the challenging party to negate “‘any reasonably conceivable state of facts that could provide a rational basis for the classification.’”...

Thus, the result of Cleburne is that 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 hard headedly--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.

Once we have determined the metes and bounds of the constitutional right in question, we examine whether Congress identified a history and pattern of unconstitutional employment discrimination by the States against the disabled. Just as §1 of the Fourteenth Amendment applies only to actions committed “under color of state law,” Congress’ §5 authority is appropriately exercised only in response to state transgressions. The legislative record of the ADA, however, simply fails to show that Congress did in fact identify a pattern of irrational state discrimination in employment against the disabled.

Respondents contend 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. All of these, they say, are “state actors” for purposes of the Fourteenth Amendment. This is quite true, but the Eleventh Amendment does not extend its immunity to units of local government. 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. 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.

Congress made a general finding in the ADA that “historically, society has tended to isolate and segregate individuals with disabilities, and, despite some improvements, such forms of discrimination against individuals with disabilities continue to be a serious and pervasive social problem.” The record assembled by Congress includes many instances to support such a finding. But the great majority of these incidents do not deal with the activities of States....

The ADA’s constitutional shortcomings are apparent when the Act is compared to Congress’ efforts in the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to respond to a serious pattern of constitutional violations. In South Carolina v. Katzenbach (1966), we considered whether the Voting Rights Act was “appropriate” legislation to enforce the Fifteenth Amendment’s protection against racial discrimination in voting. Concluding that it was a valid exercise of Congress’ enforcement power under §2 of the Fifteenth Amendment, we noted that “[b]efore enacting the measure, Congress explored with great care the problem of racial discrimination in voting.”

In that Act, Congress documented a marked pattern of unconstitutional action by the States. State officials, Congress found, routinely applied voting tests in order to exclude African-American citizens from registering to vote. Congress also determined that litigation had proved ineffective and that there persisted an otherwise inexplicable 50-percentage-point gap in the registration of white and African-American voters in some States. Congress’ response was to promulgate in the Voting Rights Act a detailed but limited remedial scheme designed to guarantee meaningful enforcement of the Fifteenth Amendment in those areas of the Nation where abundant evidence of States’ systematic denial of those rights was identified.

The contrast between this kind of evidence, and the evidence that Congress considered in the present case, is stark. Congressional enactment of the ADA represents its judgment that there should be a “comprehensive national mandate for the elimination of discrimination against individuals with disabilities.” Congress is the final authority as to desirable public policy, but in order to authorize private individuals to recover money damages against the States, there must be a pattern of discrimination by the States which violates the Fourteenth Amendment, and the remedy imposed by Congress must be congruent and proportional to the targeted violation. Those requirements are not met here, and to uphold the Act’s application to the States would allow Congress to rewrite the Fourteenth Amendment law laid down by this Court inCleburne. Section 5 does not so broadly enlarge congressional authority. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is thereforeReversed.

JUSTICE KENNEDY, WITH WHOM JUSTICE O’CONNOR JOINS, CONCURRING.

For the reasons explained by the Court, an equal protection violation has not been shown with respect to the several States in this case. If the States had been transgressing the Fourteenth Amendment by their mistreatment or lack of concern for those with impairments, one would have expected to find in decisions of the courts of the States and also the courts of the United States extensive litigation and discussion of the constitutional violations. This confirming judicial documentation does not exist. That there is a new awareness, a new consciousness, a new commitment to better treatment of those disadvantaged by mental or physical impairments does not establish that an absence of state statutory correctives was a constitutional violation.

It must be noted, moreover, that what is in question is not whether the Congress, acting pursuant to a power granted to it by the Constitution, can compel the States to act. What is involved is only the question whether the States can be subjected to liability in suits brought not by the Federal Government, ... but by private persons seeking to collect moneys from the state treasury without the consent of the State. The predicate for money damages against an unconsenting State in suits brought by private persons must be a federal statute enacted upon the documentation of patterns of constitutional violations committed by the State in its official capacity. That predicate, for reasons discussed here and in the decision of the Court, has not been established. With these observations, I join the Court’s opinion.

JUSTICE BREYER, WITH WHOM JUSTICE STEVENS, JUSTICE SOUTER AND JUSTICE GINSBURG JOIN, DISSENTING.

Reviewing the congressional record as if it were an administrative agency record, the Court holds the statutory provision before us, 42 U.S.C. §12202, unconstitutional. The Court concludes that Congress assembled insufficient evidence of unconstitutional discrimination, that Congress improperly attempted to “re-write” the law we established in Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Center, Inc. (1985), and that the law is not sufficiently tailored to address unconstitutional discrimination.

Section 5, however, grants Congress the “power to enforce, by appropriate legislation” the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection guarantee. As the Court recognizes, state discrimination in employment against persons with disabilities might “‘run afoul of the Equal Protection Clause’” where there is no “‘rational relationship between the disparity of treatment and some legitimate governmental purpose.’” In my view, Congress reasonably could have concluded that the remedy before us constitutes an “appropriate” way to enforce this basic equal protection requirement. And that is all the Constitution requires.