Hawaii advocates for the disabled say it is no surprise that more than 10 years after the Americans with Disabilities Act was adopted that courts are still trying to define what counts as a disability. Hawaii ADA activists
wary of Supreme Court’s
ruling narrowing lawStar-Bulletin staff and wire
In a ruling that could affect millions of Americans, the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday limited the landmark federal law protecting the disabled from discrimination to impairments that prevent such daily tasks as bathing or brushing one's teeth.
By unanimous decision, the justices appeared to narrow the number of people covered by the law, which requires employers to accommodate their disabled workers.
In a ruling that cheered business groups and disappointed disability rights advocates, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said the proper test involved whether a worker's impairment prevented or restricted tasks "that are of central importance to most people's daily lives."
Gary Smith, president of non-profit public interest group, The Hawaii Disability Rights Center, said he believes the ruling will be a cause for concern in the disabled community.
"I know people with disabilities get very worried and distressed at any indication it (the ADA) could be narrowed in any way," he said. But Smith said it is still too early to say how much impact the Supreme Court ruling will have.
"The whole definition of disability is still very fluid so it's not surprising that the courts are trying to figure out what disability means," he said. "It's still so untested in so many areas so each one of these lawsuits helps to clarify it."
But in the end, it will be up to Congress to decide if it wants to take action related to the ADA and Supreme Court interpretations of the law, he said.
For Brent Beals, president of Phoenix-based Accessibility Consulting Inc., a firm that provides accessibility consulting services and advice on compliance with the ADA, yesterday's Supreme Court ruling was welcome.
"I agree with it," he said. "I think the Supreme Court was right in defining disability or narrowing it down. I don't think it hurts people with disabilities, it just defines a little more tightly who they are."
The decision may affect millions of U.S. workers who suffer repetitive strain injuries or similar impairments that leave them partly disabled.
O'Connor also said the definition applied not only to disabled employees, but to other provisions of the law dealing with public transportation and public accommodations for people with disabilities.
When the Americans with Disabilities Act, the most important civil rights law of the last 25 years, was adopted in 1990, Congress found that some 43 million Americans suffered from disabilities.
"If Congress intended everyone with a physical impairment that precluded the performance of some isolated, unimportant or particularly difficult manual task to qualify as disabled, the number of disabled Americans would surely have been much higher," O'Connor said.
The decision was a victory for Toyota Motor Corp.
The Toyota case involved a worker, Ella Williams, who suffered from carpal tunnel syndrome, a repetitive strain injury that causes pain in the wrists and hands. Repetitive strain injuries afflict an estimated 1 million U.S. workers.
O'Connor said the appeals court improperly relied on manual tasks, repetitive work with hands and arms extended at or above shoulder levels for extended periods, as its legal standard. However, that was not an important part of most people's daily lives, she said.
Instead, household chores, bathing and brushing one's teeth were among the essential tasks, she said, adding that the appeals court should not have disregarded the ability of Williams to do these tasks.
Williams worked on an assembly line at a Toyota plant in Georgetown, Ky. She developed carpal tunnel syndrome soon after beginning work at the plant in 1990.
She was transferred to another job inspecting cars, which eased the problem. But her work duties later were expanded to include another job requiring her to wipe down passing cars at a rate of one car per minute. Her problems reappeared. Williams asked to be reassigned to her former job in the paint inspection section. When Toyota refused, she sued.
Star-Bulletin reporter Lyn Danninger
contributed to this story.