holding that, because Congress’s authority to abrogate immunity via its power under § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment “is appropriately exercised only in response to state transgressions” and the “legislative record of the ADA . . . fails to show Congress did in fact identify a pattern of irrational state discrimination in employment against the disabled[,] Congress did not abrogate states’ Eleventh Amendment immunity” as to Title I of the ADA
How later courts described this case
- holding that, because Congress’s authority to abrogate immunity via its power under § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment “is appropriately exercised only in response to state transgressions” and the “legislative record of the ADA . . . fails to show Congress did in fact identify a pattern of irrational state discrimination in employment against the disabled[,] Congress did not abrogate states’ Eleventh Amendment immunity” as to Title I of the ADA
- explaining that “[t]he ultimate guarantee of the Eleventh Amendment is that nonconsenting States may not be sued by private individuals in federal court. . . .We have recognized, however, that Congress may abrogate the States' Eleventh Amendment immunity when it both unequivocally intends to do so and acts pursuant to a valid grant of constitutional authority.” (internal quotations, modifications, and citations omitted)
- recognizing the split between Bledsoe and Zimmerman and declining to address the issue of “whether Title II of the ADA, dealing with the ‘services, programs, or activities of a public entity,’ 42 U.S.C. § 12132, is available for claims of employment discrimination when Title I of the ADA expressly deals with that subject”
- holding that Congress indisputably abrogated States’ immunity from suits brought under the Americans with Disabilities Act by providing in 42 U.S.C. § 12202 that "[a] State shall not be immune under the eleventh amendment to the Constitution of the United States from an action in [a court] for a violation of this chapter”
Written by the judges who cited it.
Later courts went against this
Questioned by Keitt v. New York City, 882 F. Supp. 2d 412 (2011)
In 2001, the Supreme Court, in Garrett, called into question Congress’s purported abrogation of the states’ 11th Amendment immunity under Title II of the ADA; later that year, the Second Circuit, in Garcia, went farther down that path, as noted above.
Questioned by a later decision, 294 F.3d 1166 (2002)
This casts further doubt on the continued validity of the opinion because in Garrett, the Court expressly refused to conflate the separate, detailed inquiries required for each of Title I and Title II.
Limited by Meekison v. Voinovich, 67 F. App'x 900 (2008)
The Court expressly limited its holding in Garrett to claims for monetary relief, and noted that private individuals may sue for injunctive relief to enforce the standards of the ADA under Ex parte Young, 209 U.S. 123, 28 S.Ct. 441, 52 L.Ed. 714 (1908).
The opinion
Justice Kennedy,
with whom Justice O’Connor joins, concurring.
Prejudice, we are beginning to understand, rises not from malice or hostile animus alone. It may result as well from insensitivity caused by simple want of careful, rational reflection or from some instinctive mechanism to guard against people who appear to be different in some respects from ourselves. Quite apart from any historical documentation, *375 knowledge of our own human instincts teaches that persons who find it difficult to perform routine functions by reason of some mental or physical impairment might at first seem unsettling to us, unless we are guided by the better angels of our nature. There can be little doubt, then, that persons with mental or physical impairments are confronted with prejudice which can stem from indifference or insecurity as well as from malicious ill will.
One of the undoubted achievements of statutes designed to assist those with impairments is that citizens have an incentive, flowing from a legal duty, to develop a better understanding, a more decent perspective, for accepting persons, with impairments or disabilities into the larger society. The law works this way because the law can be a teacher. So I do not doubt that the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 will be a milestone on the path to a more decent, tolerant, progressive society.
It is a question of quite a different order, however, to say that the States in their official capacities, the States as governmental entities, must be held in violation of the Constitution on the assumption that they embody the misconceived or malicious perceptions of some of their citizens. It is a most serious charge to say a State has engaged in a pattern or practice designed to deny its citizens the equal protection of the laws, particularly where the accusation is. based not on hostility but instead on the failure to act or the omission to remedy. States can, and do, stand apart from the citizenry. States act as neutral entities, ready to take instruction and to enact laws when their citizens so demand. The failure of a State to revise policies now seen as incorrect under a new understanding of proper policy does not always constitute the purposeful and intentional action required to make out a violation of the Equal Protection Clause. See Washington v. Davis, 426 U. S. 229 (1976).
For the reasons explained by the Court, an equal protection violation has not been shown with respect to the several States in this case. If the States had been trans *376 gressing the Fourteenth Amendment by their mistreatment or lack of concern for those with impairments, one would have expected to find in decisions of the courts of the States and also the courts of the United States extensive litigation and discussion of the constitutional violations. This confirming judicial documentation does not exist. That there is a new awareness, a new consciousness, a new commitment to better treatment of those disadvantaged by mental or physical impairments does not establish that an absence of state statutory correctives was a constitutional violation.
It must be noted, moreover, that what is in question is not whether the Congress, acting pursuant to a power granted to it by the Constitution, can compel the States to act. What is involved is only the question whether the States can be subjected to liability in suits brought not by the Federal Government (to which the States have consented, see Alden v. Maine, 527 U. S. 706, 755 (1999)), but by private persons seeking to collect moneys from the state treasury without the consent of the State. The predicate for money damages against an unconsenting State in suits brought by private persons must be a federal statute enacted upon the documentation of patterns of constitutional violations committed by the State in its official capacity. That predicate, for reasons discussed here and in the decision of the Court, has not been established. With these observations, I join the Court’s opinion.