by Otis Stephens
On May 17, 2004, the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, the United States Supreme Court held in Tennessee v. Lane that a state can be sued by disabled people who have been denied the constitutional right of access to the courts. This case was initiated in August 1998 by George Lane and Beverly Jones who, as wheelchair users, claimed that certain courtrooms in Tennessee were inaccessible to them. Lane and Jones brought an action for monetary damages against the state of Tennessee and several of its counties. In response, Tennessee contended that it enjoyed Eleventh Amendment sovereign immunity from private lawsuits brought under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Both the United States District Court and the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit denied Tennessee’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit. Tennessee’s petition for review by the Supreme Court led to the ground-breaking decision in which a bare majority of five justices recognized the “fundamental right” of access to the courts. This important disability rights decision departed significantly from the pro states’ rights trend led by Chief Justice William Rehnquist since the mid-1990s.
In a decision three years earlier, Board of Trustees v. Garrett (2001), the court barred an employment discrimination suit brought against the University of Alabama by an employee who had been demoted following breast cancer surgery. In that case, a 5-4 majority of the court concluded that Congress did not have the authority to enforce the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by authorizing an individual to sue a state for damages under Title I of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
If the court had followed the reasoning of the Garrett case, George Lane and Beverly Jones would not have prevailed; however, the four dissenters in the Garrett case were joined by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who agreed with Justice John Paul Stevens’ conclusion that access to the courts is a “fundamental right” protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Lane case was decided under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act, providing that “no qualified individual with a disability shall, by reason of such disability, be excluded from participation in or be denied the benefits of the services, programs or activities of a public entity, or be subjected to discrimination by any such entity.” Stevens discussed at some length the requirements and limits of “reasonable accommodation” under the ADA, concluding that “Title II, as it applies to the class of cases implicating the fundamental right of access to the courts, constitutes a valid exercise of Congress’ ... authority to enforce the guarantees of the Fourteenth Amendment.”
In writing for the five-member majority, Stevens was careful to limit the decision to access to the courts and the judicial system. By emphasizing a fundamental rights approach, he was able to distinguish the Garrett case, although some of his comments raise doubts about the reasoning in that decision. Three of his colleagues, Justices Souter, Ginsburg and Breyer, all of whom had dissented in Garrett, would have gone further in rejecting that precedent, but Stevens seemed intent on crafting an opinion that O’Connor could comfortably accept. The four dissenters, Chief Justice Rehnquist, and Justices Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas, were adamantly opposed to the position taken by Stevens.
Even though the Lane decision is confined to the issue of access to the courts, the fundamental rights approach that it endorses represents a significant departure from earlier decisions under the ADA. This is important not only for symbolic reasons but also because it inevitably raises the question of what other fundamental rights might be protected by Title II. If access to the courts is fundamental, what about access to the voting booth? Voting, after all, is a fundamental right, as the court has often reminded us. If voting accessibility were recognized as a fundamental right protected by the Due Process Clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, such recognition would strongly reinforce the existing statutory provisions on voter access.
On July 16, 2004, the Disability Resource Center in Knoxville, Tenn., held its annual celebration of the anniversary of the ADA. This year the DRC featured the Lane case and presented a special advocacy award to William J. (Bill) Brown, the attorney who argued the case on behalf of George Lane and Beverly Jones before the U.S. Supreme Court. In his remarks following the presentation, Brown emphasized the central theme of his successful argument to the court. He pointed out that since the right at issue in this case is a fundamental right, it obviously belongs to every citizen, regardless of disability. Since everyone is entitled to exercise this fundamental right of access to the courts, the presence or absence of a disability is irrelevant. People with disabilities, in other words, are asking for nothing more than the opportunity to exercise a fundamental right that belongs to everyone.
George Lane also attended the July 16 celebration in Knoxville. He spoke briefly to the audience, describing the circumstances that led to his lawsuit. The second-floor courtroom in the county courthouse where Lane was ordered to appear to defend himself against a charge of driving without a license was inaccessible to wheelchair users. Lane, although not a paraplegic as the Supreme Court record erroneously indicates, was recovering from a serious accident at the time of his court appearance and was using a wheelchair. Because the trial judge was unwilling to move downstairs to conduct the proceeding, Lane crawled up two flights of stairs and presented himself in the courtroom. His case was not called during the morning session. When court reconvened in the afternoon, Lane refused to crawl up the stairs a second time, and he exercised his legal right to refuse to be carried upstairs by an attendant. He was then cited for contempt of court and ordered to be confined in the county jail. Ironically, he pointed out that the paddy wagon that transported him from the courthouse to the jail was fully accessible, in contrast with the courtroom.
Beverly Jones, the other plaintiff, is a certified court reporter who, as a wheelchair user, was denied access to several county courtrooms in Tennessee. She was accordingly prevented from accepting court reporting assignments from attorneys who conducted litigation in the inaccessible courtrooms.
Tennessee v. Lane is a major constitutional victory for people with disabilities. Its importance is both symbolic and strategic. The decision opens the door for further litigation testing the dimensions of the concept of fundamental rights. An early test is likely to take place in the Lane case itself. Now that the right to sue has been established, it remains for the district court to determine whether, in fact, Lane and Jones are entitled to the courthouse accommodations that they seek. The American Council of the Blind has a vital interest in the expansion of fundamental rights of access for people with disabilities. By selecting cases carefully and focusing on the right of access to basic governmental programs and services at all levels, we can build on the Lane precedent and work to make sure that its promise is fulfilled.