Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
Page Number: 253

524US1

Unit: $U83

[09-06-00 20:30:03] PAGES PGT: OPIN

208 PENNSYLVANIA DEPT. OF CORRECTIONS v. YESKEY

Opinion of the Court

Justice Scalia delivered the opinion of the Court.
The question before us is whether Title II of the Ameri-
cans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA), 104 Stat. 337, 42
U. S. C. § 12131 et seq., which prohibits a “public entity” from
discriminating against a “qualiﬁed individual with a disabil-
ity” on account of that individual’s disability, see § 12132, cov-
ers inmates in state prisons. Respondent Ronald Yeskey
was such an inmate, sentenced in May 1994 to serve 18 to 36
months in a Pennsylvania correctional facility. The sentenc-
ing court recommended that he be placed in Pennsylvania’s
Motivational Boot Camp for ﬁrst-time offenders, the success-
ful completion of which would have led to his release on
parole in just six months. See Pa. Stat. Ann., Tit. 61, § 1121
et seq. (Purdon Supp. 1998). Because of his medical history
of hypertension, however, he was refused admission. He
ﬁled this suit against petitioners, the Commonwealth of
Pennsylvania’s Department of Corrections and several de-
partment ofﬁcials, alleging that his exclusion from the Boot
Camp violated the ADA. The District Court dismissed for
failure to state a claim, Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 12(b)(6), holding
the ADA inapplicable to inmates in state prisons; the Third
Circuit reversed, 118 F. 3d 168 (1997); we granted certiorari,
522 U. S. 1086 (1998).

Petitioners argue that state prisoners are not covered by
the ADA for the same reason we held in Gregory v. Ashcroft,
501 U. S. 452 (1991), that state judges were not covered by
the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA),
29 U. S. C. § 621 et seq. Gregory relied on the canon of con-
struction that absent an “unmistakably clear” expression of
intent to “alter the usual constitutional balance between the

tional Prison Project of the ACLU Foundation et al. by Steven R. Shapiro,
David M. Porter, Marjorie Rifkin, and Elizabeth Alexander.

Briefs of amici curiae were ﬁled for Adapt et al. by Stephen F. Gold;
and for the National Advisory Group for Justice et al. by Michael
Churchill.