Polk Law Blog

Today, Congress passed the ADA Amendments Act of 2008, which the President intends to sign. Manpowerblogs has a succinct summary of the bill. (UPDATE. CT Employment Law Blog has another good summary.) The ADAAA amends the Americans with Disabilities Act in some important theoretical ways. Initially, I do not anticipate that this will have much of an effect on local employers. Long-term, I think courts are going to struggle with trying to figure out what, exactly, Congress just did.  For employers with solid ADA compliance practices today, most should just keep doing what they are doing, but there is a real risk that the number of employees who are protected by the act will increase. It’s going to take a while for the courts to figure out where the new line is drawn. Click for more…

Most notably, the ADAAA expands the definition of “disability,” effectively doing away with a line of case law that began with Sutton v. United Airlines in 1997. In Sutton, the plaintiffs, identical twin sisters, both had very bad eyesight (20/200) which was correctable. They applied for work as pilots at United Airlines but were rejected because they failed to meet the airline’s uncorrected minimum of 20/100. They sued under the ADA, which prohibits discrimination based on a “disability.” Under the ADA, a disability is defined as an impairment that “substantially limits one or more … major life activities.” The Supreme Court rejected the claim, finding that, because the plaintiff’s vision did not substantially limit anything (because it was corrected), they were not “disabled” and did not have the protection of the ADA.

The new version changes the definition of several terms to expand the definition of “disability” and “substantially limits.” The bill has bipartisan support and are even endorsed by several business groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Manufacturers Association. My take is that these groups saw the new ambiguously-worded bill as a good compromise under the threat of more expansive and definite definitions that were present in an earlier version of this legislation. 

(Aside: Interestingly, the new version specifically allows courts to consider the mitigating effects of glasses and contacts in determining whether a person has a disability or not. Even though the theory of Sutton is being overturned, if the same plaintiffs were to sue again, they would lose again, because an airline is entitled to discriminate against people with uncorrected 20/200 vision who want to become pilots, even if it is corrected with glasses or contacts to 20/20. An odd result given the express intent of the legislation to overturn Sutton, but probably the right one. Who thinks all people who wear glasses should be considered part of a protected class? Me neither.)

What the new version does not do is is clearly define what “substantially limits” mean. All it tells us is that the current interpretation is wrong, that Congress wants the courts to interpret it more “broadly”, and that interpretation shouldn’t require “extensive analysis.” Clearly more people are now protected under the ADA. Who, exactly are those people? Beats me. I expect lots of “extensive analysis” in the years to come. 

I think these changes were nercessary, but I think both employers and employees are being done a disservice by Congress’s failure to more clearly define what a disability is. The moral of this story: I guess we shouldn’t expect something with this much bipartisan support to be too heavy on specifics.