States’ sovereign immunity cited
Top court yanks legal rug from under state workers with disabilities
By SHERRY HALBROOK
Once again, the US Supreme Court has expanded the immunity of states from lawsuits at the expense of their employees.
This time the court slammed the door shut on the rights of state employees to sue their employers in federal courts for damages if they violate provisions of the federal Americans with Disabilities Act. The ADA was enacted in 1990 to assure workers of reasonable accommodations for their disabilities.
The court voted 5-4, as it has done in a series of similar cases that it has decided in the past six years, to constrict the power of Congress to control the behavior of states, unless a state chooses to waive its sovereign immunity on the issue.
Those decisions have wreaked havoc with the ability of state workers to protect themselves from employer abuses.
PEF, for instance, had already won a federal court case to enforce the rights of hundreds of members to overtime pay under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, when the first of these top-court decisions was handed down in the case of the Seminole Tribe of Florida vs. the state of Florida.
As a result of the ruling in that case, PEF’s FLSA win was thrown out and the union was forced to start its case over in state courts. The union is still struggling to get a firm legal toehold for its case in the state courts.
In the majority opinion for the most recent decision, Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote that Congress exceeded its authority when it enacted a law that opened the states to lawsuits. He said that it was not enough for Congress to have enacted the legislation in response to a general history of societal discrimination against people with disabilities. Congress should have demonstrated that the states had been engaged in a pattern of unconstitutional discrimination before it attempted to impose restrictions on the states, Rehnquist said.
Under this decision, state workers can still go to federal court to seek an injunction to stop state officials from violating their rights, but they will not be able to ask for damages such as back pay. The federal government could sue the state on behalf of an individual employee, but isn’t expected to do this in more than a handful of cases.
“Our members have some protection under the state Human Rights Law,” says PEF General Counsel William Seamon, “although it is more limited in scope than the ADA.” Members would have to bring these cases themselves, since the union does not represent individual members in discrimination cases unless the decision could set a valuable precedent with the potential to benefit many members.
Seamon adds that PEF is attempting to have its FLSA cases heard in the state Court of Claims, where the state has waived its sovereign immunity.
This court traditionally has heard cases involving negligence claims and disputes over enforcement of contracts.
It also has a much tighter statute of limitations.