Scalia harmed rights of disabled

By Mike Ervin

Tribune News Service

Antonin Scalia’s hostility toward civil-rights claims was evident in many of the Americans with Disabilities Act cases that came before him on the U.S Supreme Court.

In two cases, Sutton v. United Airlines and Toyota Motor Manufacturing, Kentucky Inc. v. Williams, the court diluted the ADA definition of disability to the point where many people with legitimate disabilities could no longer bring claims. In both cases, Scalia voted with the majority.

Thankfully, Congress subsequently passed the ADA Amendments Act of 2008 specifically to undo the damage of those rulings.

But Scalia’s questionable rulings were not limited to those cases.

He wrote a caustic dissent in the ADA case of PGA Tour Inc. v. Martin, in which the majority ruled that the PGA Tour had to let disabled golfer Casey Martin use a golf cart during competitions. Scalia wrote that the decision was an “Alice in Wonderland determination.”

The Martin case was important because it reaffirmed the rights of all disabled Americans to receive reasonable accommodations that may be necessary to make public places fully accessible. That’s a cornerstone of the ADA. But Scalia saw this as nothing more than a ridiculous judicial intrusion on the private sector.

The most-significant Supreme Court ADA case was Olmstead v. L.C and E.W. In this case, two disabled women from Georgia were being indefinitely kept in an institution despite their stated desire to be supported in a community setting. A 6-3 majority ruled that such arbitrary institutionalization of people with disabilities violates the ADA. As a result, the women moved into a community-living situation, as have thousands of others with disabilities.

But again, Scalia joined the dissent, written by Clarence Thomas, which belittled the idea that endless institutionalization equals discrimination. “By adopting such a broad view of discrimination, the majority drains the term of any meaning other than as a proxy for decisions disapproved of by this Court,” the opinion read.

If Scalia and the dissenters had prevailed in the Olmstead case, it would have set a devastating precedent. The two women may well have been locked away in an institution for the rest of their lives.

Fortunately, Scalia mostly did not succeed in shredding the ADA. Court decisions on civil-rights laws like the ADA significantly impact the lives of the millions of Americans. It’s imperative that Scalia’s successor be a strong defender of civil rights – someone who understands, much more than Scalia did, that disability rights are civil rights.

Mike Ervin is a Chicago-based writer and a disability-rights activist with ADAPT. He wrote this for Progressive Media Project, a source of liberal commentary on domestic and international issues; it is affiliated with The Progressive magazine. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.