In the case of health insurance, the courts also have beaten back the EEOC s aggressive views of the statute. The EEOC, however, has taken the position that an employer may violate the ADA if it singles out a particular disability, such as deafness or AIDS, or a group of disabilities, such as cancers, for a lower level of benefits or no benefits at all. Over the past years, at least seven federal circuit courts have weighed in on the side of the insurers. Most recently, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in EEOC vs. Staten Island Savings Bank , following six other circuits, held that so long as every employee is offered the same plan regardless of that employee s disability present or future no discrimination occurs even if the plan offers different coverage for different disabilities. Title III of the ADA, which requires restaurants, hotels, theaters and other places of public accommodation to remove barriers to access, has developed along different lines.
Plaintiffs can seek only injunctive relief, plus attorneys fees and costs for the plaintiff.
The result is that few of these cases go to trial. The parties perform a property inspection and draft a settlement agreement, then the case is dismissed. In a number of cases, plaintiffs have claimed that they were discriminated against with respect to insurance benefits, and that such conduct violated Title III s equal access requirement, but a clear majority of the federal appellate courts that have addressed this issue have determined that Title III deals only with access to physical places. Ron Rosengarten is an attorney and shareholder with Greenberg Traurig LLP, a law firm in Miami. Copyright 2001 by The National Underwriter Company in the serial publication.