Eleventh Circuit: Mental Retardation is Not a Disability Under the ADA
I stole the headline from Sam Bagenstos at Disability Law. He has the relevant excerpt from the unpublished Eleventh Circuit District Court decision which asserts that:
It is unclear whether thinking, communicating and social interaction are “major life activities” under the ADA.
12 comments:
(insert strangled, animal-like noises here)
Well. This explains much about our justice system, if the judges who rendered that verdict based the decision on the lack of "thinking, communicating and social interaction" in their own activities.
"It is unclear whether thinking, communicating and social interaction are “major life activities” under the ADA."
Good Lord, they better be!
Let's cut out eating and laughing too, long as we're at it...
That just floors me.
At least it was an unpublished per curiam decision, which should mean that it has no precedential value. And while I can't pat the Supreme Court on the back for its handling of all disability issues, I don't think it would uphold this.
Next thing they'll be saying breathing isn't a 'major life activity'. Of course with those people until they lose the ability to enjoy such things easily it wouldn't be a concern. So of course it wouldn't be rated that way.
Don't mind me. I just need to Rant a bit.
Not only is mental retardation not a disability under the ADA, but by that precedent, I suspect you could make an argument against everything from deafness to autism to ... well, a *lot* of disabilities.
I should clarify: those are not my positions, just the positions that I suspect could come from this precedent.
Wait. Just. A. Minute.
These judges went to law school. They passed the lsat, they spent HUGE money and became lawyers.
Then, at some time, somebody thought they were such *excellent and amazing lawyers* that they should be *judges*... and they are paid, I imagine, a tidy sum for their legal expertise and discerning interpretation of the law...
And all they can give us, present and future PWD's is this *egregiously* wrongheaded piece of ...um... :
"It is unclear whether thinking, communicating and social interaction are “major life activities” under the ADA
Did the claimant not have persons with professional designations certify that the impairments exist?
Of course they did.
The question is not the stupid one above.
(for the record, I'm not taking sides, I'm simply doing a bit of post-decision proofreading)
The question is something like this:
Whether a reasonable person would consider that the claimant has enough *difficulty* with thinking,communication or social interaction, to have that level of difficulty meet the "disability" standard under the ADA, and then the judges give their reasons why, yea or nay, based on the evidence in front of them.
I need a drink and I'm going to bed.
As I said on a listserve where this opinion has been bandied about, apparently the judges involved do none of the above activities on a daily basis.
gah.
As much as I hate this, if you read the actual information presented to the court the result makes sense. The mother of the young man in question insisted that "there are no jobs he cannot perform because of any alleged disability." They insisted he could drive, read, had gone to college and was not disabled by his Down syndrome. The ADA exists to help people who need accommodations on account of their disability and the mother and lawyer went to a great effort to prove he didn't need any accommodations UNTIL he didn't get the job in question. When I read what they said I do see a man who required accommodation to accomplish what he did, but unless it is those accommodations that are highlighted, not his accomplishments and a pretense that he was able to (as a example) learn to drive the same as anyone without a disability would learn. What I read was a very poorly presented case by a public defender.
I'd agree with that. But then the court should have simply denied the man standing, not ruled on their interpretation of the content of the ADA. To add that the ADA doesn't apply to mental retardation is superfluous to the case, then, and seems a rather hostile act, imo.
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