Opinion

Sutton v. United Air Lines, Inc.

  • 527 U.S. 471
  • 119 S. Ct. 2139
  • 144 L. Ed. 2d 450
  • 1999 U.S. LEXIS 4371
Court
Supreme Court of the United States
Filed
Jun 22, 1999
Status
Published
Author
Ginsburg
On the bench
O'Connor, Rehnquist, Scalia, Kennedy, Souter, Thomas, Ginsburg, Stevens, Breyer
Cited by
1,788 cases

Reported superseded by statute, as recognized in Mercado v. Government of PR — not on the Supreme Court's list

holding the City was not entitled to simply rely on the physician’s that mitigating or corrective measures must be taken into recommendation2as the basis for withdrawing its employment account in judging whether an individual possesses a offer to Holiday. See, e.g., EEOC v. Texas Bus Lines, 923 F. disability because doing otherwise would “run[] directly counter to the individualized inquiry mandated by the ADA”

How later courts described this case

  • holding the City was not entitled to simply rely on the physician’s that mitigating or corrective measures must be taken into recommendation2as the basis for withdrawing its employment account in judging whether an individual possesses a offer to Holiday. See, e.g., EEOC v. Texas Bus Lines, 923 F. disability because doing otherwise would “run[] directly counter to the individualized inquiry mandated by the ADA”
  • holding that a complaint alleging that two job applicants were "regarded as” disabled by an employer was properly dismissed because the job applicants had not alleged and could not demonstrate that the employer's job requirements reflected a belief that the applicants were substantially limited in a major life activity and thus not addressing the remainder of the prima facie case for disability discrimination
  • holding that the phrase “substantially limits” is “properly read as requiring that a person be presently-not potentially or hypothetically-substantially limited in order to demonstrate a disability. A ‘disability’ exists only where an impairment ‘substantially limits’ a major life activity, not where it ‘might,’ ‘could,’ or ‘would’ be substantially limiting if corrective measures were not taken.”
  • reasoning that an “approach [that] would often require courts and employers to speculate about a person’s condition and would, in many cases, force them to make a disability determination based on general information about how an uncorrected impairment usually affects individuals, rather than on the individual’s actual condition” is “contrary to the letter and the spirit of the ADA”

Written by the judges who cited it.

Later courts went against this

  • Reported superseded by statute, as recognized in Mercado v. Government of PR — not on the Supreme Court's list

    527 U.S. 471, 477 (1999), superseded on other grounds by statute as stated in Verhoff v. Time Warner Cable, Inc., 299 F. App’x 488, 494
    Court of Appeals for the First CircuitMar 3, 20163 citing opinionsby statuteother groundsunconfirmed confidenceRead it
  • Questioned by Delaney v. City of Alexandria, 800 So. 2d 806 (2001)

    The category of "working" as a "major life activity" for purposes of determining handicap status has been questioned by the United States Supreme Court in Sutton v. United Air Lines, Inc., 527 U.S. 471, 492, 119 S.Ct. 2139, 2151, 144 L.Ed.2d 450, 468-69 (1999), wherein the Court noted:
    Supreme Court of LouisianaNov 28, 2001Read it

Distinguished

  • Distinguished by John Goodpaster v. Schwan's Home Service, Inc. and Todd Swanson, Individually and in His Corporate Capacity, 2014 Iowa Sup. LEXIS 76 (2014)

    These initial observations reveal Toyota and Sutton, which were explicitly built upon a core premise that the ADA must be “interpreted strictly to create a demanding standard for qualifying as disabled,” Toyota, 534 U.S. at 197, 122 S.Ct. at 691, 151 L.Ed.2d at 631; accord Sutton, 527 U.S. at 488, 119 S.Ct. at 2149, 144 L.Ed.2d at 466, are inapposite to any discussion of the meaning of the ICRA.
    Supreme Court of IowaJun 27, 2014Read it
  • Distinguished by Bennett v. Permanente, 931 F. Supp. 2d 697 (2013)

    ” Id. The first definition is inapplicable because Plaintiff asserts that he was impaired.
    District Court, D. MarylandMar 20, 2013Read it
  • Distinguished by Marilyn J. Bartlett v. New York State Board of Law Examiners, 226 F.3d 69 (2000)

    The Supreme Court’s decision in Sutton is distinguishable.
    Court of Appeals for the Second CircuitAug 30, 2000Read it

The opinion

Justice Ginsburg,

concurring.

I agree that 42 U. S. C. § 12102 (2)(A) does not reach the legions of people with correctable disabilities. The strongest clues to Congress’ perception of the domain of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA), as I see it, are legislative findings that “some 43,000,000 Americans have one or more physical or mental disabilities,” § 12101(a)(1), and that “individuals with disabilities are a discrete and insular minority,” persons “subjected to a history of purposeful unequal treatment, and relegated to a position of political powerlessness in our society,” § 12101(a)(7). These declarations are inconsistent with the enormously embracing definition of disability petitioners urge. As the Court demonstrates, see ante, at 483-487, the inclusion of correctable disabilities within the ADA’s domain would extend the Act’s coverage to far more than 43 million people. And persons whose uncorrected eyesight is poor, or who rely on daily medication for their well-being, can be found in every social and economic class; they do not cluster among the politically powerless, nor do they coalesce as historical victims of discrimination. In short, in no sensible way can one rank the large numbers of diverse individuals with corrected disabilities as a “discrete and insular minority.” I do not mean to suggest that any of the constitutional presumptions or doctrines that may apply to “discrete and insular” minorities in other contexts are relevant here; there is no con *495 stitutional dimension to this case. Congress’ use of the phrase, however, is a telling indication of its intent to restrict the ADA’s coverage to a confined, and historically disadvantaged, class.

This is a copy of a public record, reproduced as it was published. It is not legal advice, and it may not be the version a court would rely on. Check the official source before you cite it.

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