by Charles S.P. Hodge
On Monday, April 16, the U.S. Supreme Court announced that it had accepted for review two additional cases raising issues under the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. The first case is Toyota Manufacturing Company of Kentucky v. Williams in which, after the federal trial court had granted summary judgment to the employer, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit had reversed that judgment holding that the plaintiff/appellant who was suffering from carpal tunnel syndrome could properly be viewed as a qualified individual with a disability under Title I of the ADA. In addition, the court held that even though the plaintiff/appellant’s carpal tunnel syndrome kept her from performing only some of the essential functions of her job, her impairing condition did substantially limit her major life activity of working and thus did fall within the ADA’s definition of a disability. The defendant/appellee employer has sought and gained review in the Supreme Court raising the issues of whether an impairing condition which admittedly prohibits the plaintiff from performing only some of the essential functions of her job can properly be held to be a disability within the definition of that term contained in the ADA, and whether an individual who is experiencing carpal tunnel syndrome can properly be held to be a qualified individual with a disability under the ADA. The petitioning employer argues that carpal tunnel syndrome only partially limits the plaintiff in performing her work, and therefore cannot be properly said to substantially limit the plaintiff’s major life activity of working.
The second case, U.S. Airways Inc. v. Barnet, comes to the Supreme Court from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. That court had reversed a trial court judgment for the employer and had revived the plaintiff’s Title I ADA claim that the airline had failed to reasonably accommodate his back injury by reassigning him to light duty work in the mail room. In petitioning for and gaining review in the Supreme Court, the airline argued that the accommodation sought by the plaintiff, reassignment to light duty in its mail room, would require it to override its collectively bargained contractual seniority system, and that to do so cannot be required of it under the ADA since such an action would constitute an undue burden. This issue of whether the reasonable accommodation of reassignment to another job under Title I of the ADA can or cannot be an exception to or take precedence over an employer’s collectively bargained seniority system is one of the most important issues to thus far reach the Supreme Court under Title I of the ADA. In light of the adverse decisions rendered by the Supreme Court in cases like the Garrett and Sutton cases, we must watch for the outcome of these two ADA employment discrimination cases with much trepidation. We can only hope that the high court will halt its trend of unduly, narrowly and restrictively interpreting the provisions of the ADA. The Williams and Barnet cases will be briefed over the summer, argued early in the high court’s new term this fall, and decided in the spring of 2002.