Litigation cannot be pursued by a disabled Florida firefighter against the city of Sanford under the Americans With Disability Act, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Friday.
Karyn Stanley, in Stanley v. City of Stanford, sued the city after officials said that her disability entitled her to only 24 months of insurance coverage. Stanley was hired by the city as a firefighter in 1999 and was forced to retire in 2018 due to a Parkinson’s disease diagnosis.
The city changed its policy in 2003 to provide health insurance for retirees with 25 years of service up to age 65, while those who retired due to disability only received two years of coverage after leaving city service.
Writing for the majority in the 7-2 decision, Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch agreed with the District Court ruling that said the ADA didn’t give Stanley the ability to sue since she was not a “qualified individual” because “she was not someone ‘who with or without reasonable accommodation, can perform the essential functions of the employment position that such individual holds or desires."”
That ruling was affirmed by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Gorsuch also said “other avenues may exist for retirees like Ms. Stanley to seek relief” and that other laws might protect retirees from discrimination with respect to postemployment benefits.
In a dissent, Associate Justice Kentajii Brown Jackson said “retirement benefits are essential building blocks of the American Dream. Workers typically earn these benefits on the job and reap the rewards after leaving the workforce. Congress has long understood that, by enabling workers to retire with dignity, independence, and security, retirement benefits are a critical aspect of job-related compensation.”
She also said in her dissent that the court ignored those rights.
“It (the court) reaches out to cut off postemployment protection against disability discrimination in a case that does not require us to decide that question; seizes upon the inapposite text of the qualified-individual definition; and converts that text into a temporal limit it was never designed to be,” Jackson said. “Worse still, by doing all this, the court renders meaningless Title I’s protections for disabled workers’ retirement benefits just when those protections matter most.”
In a concurring opinion with the majority, Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett, took exception with what he termed “a bait and switch” where the plaintiffs asked the court to resolve what he termed a “discrete circuit split” and then asked the court to resolve “an entirely different legal question.”
“Redirecting us to a different legal question at the merits stage can be disruptive, inefficient, and unfair to all involved,” Thomas said.
