By Adam Francoeur
In the recent case of Serwatka v Rockwell Automation Inc., the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against employment discrimination claims where termination may be based on an employee’s perceived disability. Kathleen Serwatka, an assembly line worker, was fired for her alleged inability to lift a certain amount of weight even though her doctor said otherwise. Despite this evidence, the court found that Serwatka no longer has a claim under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) -- even if the employer had other reasons for firing her. This is problematic because this decision now makes it harder for people with disabilities to prove workplace discrimination.
Serwatka follows in the wake of last year’s Supreme Court decision in Gross v. FBL Financial Services, Inc., a lawsuit brought under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA). In Gross, the Supreme Court decided that so-called “mixed-motive” discrimination cases, where employers have several reasons for firing someone, are not available under the ADEA. The court reasoned that mixed-motive claims could only proceed based on race, religion and gender discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. While Congress specifically referred to mixed-motive claims when Title VII was amended in 1991, it neglected to similarly update the ADEA.
Court observers were hopeful that despite the Supreme Court’s ruling in Gross, ADA mixed-motive claims would survive because their language more closely tracks the amendments to Title VII than does the ADEA. Since the ADA contains remedies similar to those found in Title VII, observers believed that courts would defer to Congress when comparing these two anti-discrimination laws. In Serwatka, the Seventh Circuit declined to distinguish the ADA on this basis, and instead relied on Gross to reject the connection between Title VII and the ADA.
Looking ahead, mixed-motive claims will continue to face greater hostility in the wake of the Gross decision. If Courts outside the Seventh Circuit follow and expand upon Serwatka, employers will have greater freedom to fire employees with real or perceived disabilities. This ruling makes the workplace less equitable, striking a blow against workers in favor of the boardroom.
Adam Francoeur is a second year student at City University of New York School of Law. Before coming to law school he was the policy director of Immigration Equality, an organization that advances the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and HIV-positive non-citizens where he was instrumental in the effort to repeal the HIV-immigration ban (for more information on Immigration Equality visit their website at www.immigrationequality.org). Adam has authored several articles and reports on LGBT and HIV-positive immigrants in the modern administrative state including, The Enemy Within: Constructions of U.S. Immigration Law and the Homoterrorist Threat. Adam spent his summer working at the Staff Attorney’s Office of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
(Photo by freewheelinbiker.)
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