Tennessee v. Lane

Tennessee v. Lane, 124 S. Ct. 1978; 158 L. Ed. 2d 820 (2004), argued 13 Jan. 2004, decided 17 May 2004 by a vote of 5 to 4; Stevens writing for himself, Breyer, Ginsburg, Souter, and O'Connor; Rehnquist, Scalia, and Thomas writing dissenting opinions. In Tennessee v. Lane the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of a provision in the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) allowing individuals to sue states that maintain courthouses inaccessible to people with disabilities.

Lane began as a lawsuit against the state of Tennessee by George Lane, a paraplegic who uses a wheelchair. Called to appear at a county court on criminal charges, Lane discovered that he could not get his wheelchair into a second floor courtroom. The courthouse had no elevator or ramp, and Lane crawled up two flights of stairs to make his appearance. When he was called back for another hearing, though, Lane refused to crawl or be carried by court officials, and was jailed for failing to appear.

Title II of the ADA prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities in public programs, services, and activities, and Lane argued that Tennessee's inaccessible courtrooms violated the law. But Tennessee raised a constitutional defense, based on the Eleventh Amendment, which provides that federal judicial power shall not extend to “any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by Citizens of another State.” Though the words expressly bar only lawsuits brought in federal court by citizens from outside a state, the Supreme Court has interpreted the Eleventh Amendment as a more general recognition of state sovereign immunity that extends to lawsuits for money damages brought by a state's own citizens.

Lane, in response, cited section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment, which gives Congress the power to enforce, “by appropriate legislation,” Fourteenth Amendment rights against states. This, according to Court rulings, includes the power to abrogate state sovereign immunity and authorize lawsuits for money damages against states (Fitzpatrick v. Bitzer, 1976) But in Boerne v. Flores (1997), the Court ruled that Congress could authorize private lawsuits only when they were aimed at remedying Fourteenth Amendment rights, not when they went beyond this and thus “substantially redefined” the right being enforced. Admitting that what counts as Fourteenth Amendment remedial litigation and what amounts to redefinition is “not easy to discern,” the Court said that the remedy must be “congruent and proportional” to the violation (Boerne v. Flores).5

After Boerne, the Supreme Court used the “congruence and proportionality” test to bar a series of lawsuits seeking money damages from states (Seminole Tribe of Florida v. Florida, 1996; College Savings Bank v. Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Ed. Expense Bd., 1999; United States v. Morrison, 2000; and Kimel v. Florida Bd. of Regents, 2002.) In Alabama v. Garrett (2001), the Court ruled that private lawsuits brought under the ADA's employment discrimination provisions were neither congruent nor proportional; the Court concluded that the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause barred only “irrational” discrimination against people with disabilities, and that the lawsuits authorized by the ADA swept far beyond this.

In his majority opinion in Lane, Justice John Paul Stevens distinguished Garrett by noting that the lawsuit in Lane concerned a court, and therefore could be seen as enforcing the Fourteenth Amendment's due process criminal justice rights, in particular the right of access to the courts. Because these are basic constitutional rights, Stevens argued, protecting them requires strong remedies. Drawing on surveys, task force reports, judicial findings, and congressional testimony, Stevens concluded that Congress had documented a long pattern of discrimination against people with disabilities in a variety of public services, including courts; Title II provided a measured, proportionate remedy. Chief Justice William Rehnquist's dissent disparaged the congressional evidence cited by Stevens. He noted that there was little specific evidence of inaccessibility of courthouses, the precise issue in the case. Moreover, Rehnquist argued, the Court had never ruled that people with disabilities had a Fourteenth Amendment right to a courtroom accessible to wheelchairs; the Fourteenth Amendment requires only that states not deny individuals access to courts—and Tennessee had offered to lift Lane into the courtroom.

The key vote in the case was Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's. Breaking with the other members of the Court's “federalism five,” O'Connor in Lane provided the fifth vote for Stevens's majority opinion. Thus Lane, together with Nevada Dept. of Human Resources v. Hibbs (2003), in which the Court rejected an Eleventh Amendment challenge to a Family and Medical Leave Act lawsuit against a state, suggested the limits of the Supreme Court's defense of states' rights.

Thomas F. Burke