Source: http://www.williamgoren.com/blog/tag/anxiety/
Timestamp: 2019-04-18 11:52:44+00:00

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While this blog is entitled Understanding the ADA, the blog as you know extends into other laws that are related in one way or another to the rights of persons with disabilities. Also, as you know, I spent 12 years in higher education teaching people how to be paralegals, with the last four of that tenure running an ABA approved paralegal program. So, education and persons with disabilities is very much an interest of mine, and numerous blog entries, such as this one, deal with the issue of disability rights in the education context. In going through my list of blog entries, it doesn’t seem that I have ever discussed a pure tort law case, except for here. Tort law involves suing each other for civil wrongs, such as for personal injury, defamation, etc. Today’s case, The Regents of the University of California v. The Superior Court of Los Angeles County (real party in interest- Katherine Rosen), occurs at the intersection of tort law, education law, and disability rights. As usual the blog entry is divided into categories and they are: facts; issues; holdings; court’s reasoning special relationship; court’s reasoning policy considerations and foreseeability; concurrence; and takeaways. The reader is free, as usual, to concentrate on any or all of the categories.
Before proceeding with the blog entry itself, I would be remiss if I didn’t wish everyone a happy Easter and a happy Passover, whichever may be the holiday you are celebrating.
Emailing his history professor that he was angered by offensive remarks from other students during the final exam and outraged because their comments had affected his performance. He also complained that he had heard the professor calling him troubled and crazy among other things. The professor forwarded his messages on to the department chair where the professor was told to calm him and encourage him to visit the school’s counseling services if he appeared genuinely paranoid or a potential threat.
Complaining about mistreatment by fellow dormitory residents by sending a three-page letter to the Dean of Students. A week later the school moved him to a new dormitory.
Complaining to three professors and a teaching assistant that students have been trying to distract him with offensive comments. The teaching assistant told her supervising professor she had never observed this behavior, but that the student himself acted oddly, including frequently talking to himself. The teaching assistant believed he was displaying signs of schizophrenia and should be referred to the University counseling and psychological services. The teaching assistant and the supervising professor met with Thompson and urged him to use the service, but Thompson denied hearing things or making things up. Another professor forwarded Thompson’s complaint to the Assistant Dean of Students who contacted the University Consultation and Response Team. That team advises campus members having concerns about the well-being of a particular student. The Dean also met with Thompson and encouraged him to seek medical help with the University’s Counseling and Psychological Services.
Thompson told the Resident Director that there were voices coming through the walls calling him an idiot. He heard a clicking noise from above sounding like a gun and believed other residents were planning to shoot him. He also told Resident Director that he had telephoned his father and was told to hurt other residents. While admitting he had thought about it, he said he decided not to hurt anyone. When campus police arrived, they searched the premises but did not find any weapons. Campus police concluded that Thompson needed psychiatric evaluation and escorted him to the emergency room for that purpose. During that examination, he reported a history of depression and complained of auditory hallucinations and paranoid thinking. He also said that for several months he had heard people talking about him and insulting him even when there was no one there though he denied suicidal or homicidal thinking. The examiner diagnosed Thompson with possible schizophrenia and major depressive disorder. Thompson agreed to take a low dose of antipsychotic medication and begin outpatient treatment at the counseling and psychological services of the University. The Dean and the response team were informed about the incident and his mental evaluation. The response team began discussing Thompson at their weekly meetings.
In March 2009, Thompson began sessions with a University psychologist. While he denied wanting to hurt himself or others, he continued to report auditory hallucinations and paranoid thoughts. He also notified the therapist that he had thrown away his prescribed antipsychotic medication. The psychologist diagnosed him with schizophrenia and urged him to see a psychiatrist at the University. Thompson refused to consider medication until he could determine whether the voices were real and expressed frustration that nobody believed him and said he would try to record the voices. Also, around this time the Resident Director notified counseling and psychological services that Thompson was having trouble in the dormitory, and that resulted in the response team deciding to move him to a single room and to consider the possibility for transitioning him into different housing.
Later in March, Thompson told University psychologist that he was still hearing voices and being harassed by other students. He said he was now open to psychiatric evaluation. Later that day, at a session with a University psychiatrist, Thompson admitted to thinking about harming others, although he had no identified victim or plan.
The psychiatrist strongly urged him to submit to voluntary hospitalization. Thompson refused but agreed to take medication. While counseling and psychological services staff agreed that Thompson did not meet the criteria for an involuntary hold, the psychiatrist recommended involuntary hospitalization if his thoughts of harming others worsened. Thompson continued to attend counseling and psychological services sessions and continued to report auditory hallucinations all the while denying he intended to harm others. He eventually withdrew from treatment.
After campus police responded to an incident at Thompson’s dormitory, Thompson was expelled from university housing and ordered to return to counseling and psychological services at the beginning of the fall quarter. After he moved to an apartment, Thompson twice called the police to complain that neighbors were yelling at him through the floor.
Thompson continued to experience auditory hallucinations in the classroom. A campus and psychological services psychologist reported that Thompson displayed a guarded attitude, slow speech, delusional thought processes, and impaired insight.
A teaching assistant emailed her professor about an incident where Thompson accused another student of calling him stupid and insisted on learning the student’s name. The teaching assistant eventually gave Thompson the name and told him to calm down, and Thompson seemed fine after that. However, the teaching assistant remained worried that Thompson’s behavior was becoming a weekly routine. The following day, another teaching assistant told her supervising professor that Thompson had come into the chemistry lab from a different section to accuse a student of verbally harassing him. That email was forwarded to the response team, who expressed concern that Thompson identified a specific student. The campus and psychological service director contacted one of their psychologist suggesting that Thompson may need urgent outreach and members of the response team tried to schedule a meeting to discuss him. He did not appear for a scheduled session with the psychologist that afternoon. The next morning, they decided to investigate whether was having similar difficulties in other classes.
After all this, while he was doing class work in the chemistry laboratory Thompson without warning or provocation stabbed a fellow student in the chest with a kitchen knife. That student had been kneeling down, placing items in her lab door, when Thompson attacked her from behind. She was taken to the hospital with life-threatening injuries but ultimately survived. Thompson ultimately pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to a charge of attempted murder and was admitted to a state mental hospital and diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.
The student stabbed by Thompson sued University of California and several of its employees for negligence saying University owed her a duty of due care to protect her from foreseeable harm, and that the duty was breached by UCLA and its employees. At trial, the trial court concluded a duty existed. That decision was appealed, and a divided Court of Appeals held over dissent that UCLA owed no duty to protect the student who was stabbed.
Does the University owe student a duty of care to protect a student from foreseeable harm?
A duty to control, warn, or protect may be based upon the defendant’s relationship with either the person whose conduct needs to be controlled or with the foreseeable victim of that conduct. That is, a duty to control may arise if the defendant has a special relationship with the foreseeably dangerous person that entails an ability to control that person’s conduct.
In an appropriate case, that duty, per this case, may be fully discharged if adequate warnings are conveyed to the students at risk.
The restatement third of torts identifies several special relationships that may support a duty to protect against foreseeable risks, including a school with its students.
Special relationships as defined by the law have some common features including: an aspect of dependency where one party relies to some degree on the other for protection; control where one party is dependent. That is, one party has superior control over the means of protection; defined boundaries where a duty of care is owed to a limited community and not to the public at large; and the party charged with a duty of care specially benefits from the arrangement.
When it comes to a university’s duty toward its students, California cases have taken a broader view when the problem is outside of alcohol-related injuries.
As a result of the unique features of the college environment, post-secondary schools have a special relationship with students while they are engaged in activities that are part of the school’s curriculum or are closely related to it delivery of educational services.
Colleges provide academic courses in exchange for a fee, but colleges are far more than just a typical business relationship. Similarly, residential colleges provide living spaces, but are much more than landlords. Along with educational services, colleges provide students with social, athletic, and cultural opportunities. All colleges provided discrete community for their students.
For many students, college is the first time they have lived away from home and while they may no longer be minors under the law, they are still learning how to navigate the world as adults. That is, they are dependent on the college community to provide structure, guidance, and a safe learning environment. In such an environment where students pay tuition and other fees in exchange for using the facilities and where they spend a significant portion of their time and may in fact live, students can reasonably expect that the premises will be free from physical defects, and that school authorities will exercise reasonable care to keep the campus free from conditions that increase the risks of crime.
Colleges have superior control over the environment and the ability to protect students.
Colleges impose a variety of rules and restrictions in the classroom and across campus in order to maintain a safe and orderly environment. For example, they often employ resident advisors, mental health counselors, and campus police. They can monitor and discipline students when necessary.
While the primary function of the college or university is to foster intellectual development through an academic curriculum, the college or university is involved in all aspects of the student’s life and provides a setting in which every aspect of student life is to some degree university guided.
In a broader sense, college administrators and educators have the power to influence student values, their consciousness, their relationship, and their behaviors.
Students are vulnerable and dependent on their colleges for a safe environment. Colleges have a superior ability to provide that safety with respect to activities they sponsor or facilities they control. Their relationship is bounded by enrollment status and so their special relationship is only with enrolled students; a limited population and a relationship of limited duration.
Colleges are in a special relationship with enrolled students only in the context of school sponsored activities over which the college have some measure of control.
Other States have ruled similarly, including Massachusetts, Florida, and Delaware.
The incident giving rise to this case occurred in a chemistry laboratory while class was in session. The core of a college’s mission is education, and the classroom is the classic setting for curricular activities. More than any other place on campus, colleges can be expected to retain a measure of control over the classroom environment. While class attendance is not strictly monitored, any college student hoping to obtain a degree must attend classes and required laboratory sessions. Accordingly, it is reasonable for students to expect that their schools will provide some measure of safety in the classroom.
The California Constitution declares that the right to public safety, where students and staff have the right to be safe and secure in their persons, extends to public and private elementary, junior high, senior high, and colleges or universities.
Violence against students in the classroom or during curricular activities while it may be rare, is a foreseeable occurrence and so public policy does not justify categorically barring an injured student’s claims against the University.
A reasonable University could perceive that its negligent failure to control a potentially violent student or to warn students who were foreseeable targets of his or her anger, could result in harm to one of those students, such as the incident at Virginia Tech in April 2007. So, classroom attacks are foreseeable occurrences that colleges have been equipping themselves to address for at least the past decade.
Whether the University was or should have been on notice that a particular student posed a foreseeable risk of violence is a specific question to be examined in light of all the surrounding circumstances. Relevant to that determination are any prior threats or acts of violence by the student, particularly if those acts of violence target an identifiable victim.
Additional relevant facts would be the opinions of examining mental health professionals or observations of students, faculty, family members, and others in the University community.
When circumstances put a school on notice that a student is at risk to commit violence against other students, the school’s failure to take appropriate steps to warn or protect foreseeable victims can be causally connected to injury the victim suffer as a result of that violence. While a criminal act is always shocking, it is not completely unpredictable if a defendant is aware of the risk.
Compared to students, colleges would typically have access to more information about potential threats and a superior ability to control the environment and prevent harm.
The court did not buy the argument of UCLA that imposing a duty of care would discourage colleges from offering comprehensive mental health and crisis management services. That is, UCLA claimed that rather than becoming engaged in the treatment of the mentally ill students, colleges would have an incentive to expel anyone posing a remote threat to others. The court acknowledged that this decision would force schools to balance competing goals, force difficult decisions, and give some schools a marginal incentive to suspend or expel student displaying a potential for violence. It also might make schools reluctant to admit certain students or to offer mental health treatment. That said, decisions like those are circumscribed by laws such as the ADA (California has a very strong State equivalent law as well, the Unruh Act). Further, market forces driving colleges across the country to adopt sophisticated violence prevention protocols after Virginia Tech likely weigh against the dismantling of those protections. Finally, colleges and universities also have options short of expelling or denying admission to deal with potentially violent students and those options will vary from case to case. If such staff can avert violent episodes like the one in this case, recognizing the duty serves the policy of preventing future harm.
UCLA also claimed that this duty will deter student from seeking mental health treatment or being candid with treatment providers for fear that their confidence it would be disclosed. That argument doesn’t wash because that issue has been around since 1976 when the California Supreme Court held in Tarasoff that a psychotherapist had a duty to warn others in certain circumstances. Since that time, no evidence has been produced that patients have been discouraged from coming to therapy or from speaking freely for fear that confidentiality will be breach.
Threat assessment and violence prevention protocols are already prevailing on university campuses.
UCLA like many other colleges across the country has already developed sophisticated strategies for identifying and diffusing potential threats to student safety. For example, the school created multidisciplinary teams of trained staff members and professionals for this very purpose. See also ¶ 1 of the takeaways §.
UCLA expressly marketed itself to prospective students and their parents as one of the safest campuses in the country.
In 2007, schools in the University of California system raised mandatory registration fee 3% in order to improve student mental health services and they planned further increases to implement all the violent prevention measures recommended by the Campus Security Task Force. So, recognition of the legal duty to protect students from foreseeable threats does not pose an unmanageable burden.
The University’s duty is limited to enrolled students who are at foreseeable risk of being harmed in a violent attack while participating in curricular activities at the school. Further, that duty is to take reasonable steps to protect student when it becomes aware of a foreseeable threat to their safety. The reasonableness of those actions is a question of whether that duty has been breached and not whether the duty exists.
UCLA offered no reason to doubt whether colleges could obtain insurance coverage for the negligent liability under consideration.
Colleges are not the ultimate insurers of all student safety. Rather, they have a duty to act with reasonable care when aware of a foreseeable threat of violence in a curricular setting. Reasonable care varies from each case and it is absolutely possible that some assault may be unavoidable despite a college’s best effort to prevent them. So, courts and juries need to be cautioned to avoid judging liability based on hindsight.
The appropriate standard of care for judging the reasonableness of the University’s action is an open question that the parties are free to litigate when it goes back to the lower courts. UCLA’s argument that there was little more it reasonably could have done to prevent the assault may be relevant to this determination.
Justice Chin concurred but said the duty should be limited to the classroom only and not to the University at large.
Depending upon which side of the aisle you are on, the article in the Chronicle of Higher Education is fortuitous or not. I certainly expect it to be used by the plaintiff to show that the duty of care established by the California Supreme Court in this case was breached. It isn’t clear what systems UCLA had in place at the time of the occurrence in this case.
Just why did I blog on this case? I blogged on this case for the very reasons suggested by UCLA in its arguments. That is, a reasonable person could foresee that all kinds of things might happen to students with mental health conditions that would not be favorable to them. For example, stereotyping to take adverse action, such as assuming a dangerous propensity when none exists. Another example, would be cutting a student loose rather than exploring all possibilities in a rush to avoid liability.
With respect to the ADA, certainly want to be thinking in terms of direct threat per this blog entry. You also want to be thinking in terms of essential eligibility requirements and whether the student can meet the essential eligibility requirements with or without reasonable modifications.
I received my J.D. degree from the University of San Diego back in 1985. Even then, California was a very policy driven State. It’s hard to believe that when I entered law school and took torts, Tarasoff was only six years old. Since then, that case is one of the all-time classics and contains a principal that is just about everywhere. This decision is a logical extension of that case. It also reflects how society has evolved since 1976 (particularly after 20 years of school shootings ), and what society perceives of the psychological makeup of the college student today. The expectations of the mindset of today’s entering college student and their parents have certainly changed. It will be very interesting to see whether other States adopt this decision. I also found it interesting that even in 2018, the highest court of a State was being explicitly policy driven. That isn’t the case in every State.
The court is absolutely right that the bulwark for persons with disabilities with respect to how colleges and universities treat them, especially after this decision, is going to be the ADA. Remember, direct threat must be based upon the best available and objective scientific evidence after an individualized analysis.
As a preventive law matter, colleges and universities would do well to assume that this case could very well become the law in their jurisdiction for a couple of different reasons. First, California has always led the way with respect to tort law principles. In fact, what constitutes basic principles of tort law all pretty much started in California. Second, the decision does a nice job of encapsulating just where society sees the mindset of both the person entering college and their parents. So, colleges and universities will want to develop comprehensive systems for dealing with the mental health of its students and then ensure that their rights under the ADA are also respected so that students with mental health issues are not pushed out the door when that is not necessary.
Just how far the duty extends outside the classroom is an open question and will be something for each college and university to assess.
Is attendance always an essential function of the job?
When the ADA first was enacted back in 1990 and went into effect in 1992, the Internet was just getting started. Back then, it was pretty obvious to everyone that an essential function of the job must mean showing up for it. Since then, technology has evolved quite a bit so now many people can do their work from just about anywhere. Therefore, whether attendance is an essential function of the job is now a case-by-case decision. How does one go about figuring out whether attendance is an essential function of the job? In my opinion, the leading case on this issue is the case of Samper v. Providence St. Vincent Medical Center, 675 F.3d 1233 (9th Cir. 2012). In this case, a neonatal nurse had fibromyalgia (a rather hard condition for physicians and patients to get a handle on and one that can limit effective sleep and which has as one of its components chronic pain/nerve pain throughout the body). As a result of her fibromyalgia and how it affected her, Samper was unable to regularly come to work in accordance with the employer’s attendance policy. Eventually, she was discharged for several reasons, including having seven absences in the 12 month period as well as a general problems with attendance. She then filed suit alleging violation of the ADA.
In affirming summary judgment for the employer, the Ninth Circuit held that regular attendance is an essential function of the job where the job requires attendance. The court goes on to give some great preventive law tips as to how you could know when that job requires attendance. A job requires attendance according to Samper, where the employee must work as part of the team, the job requires face-to-face interaction with clients and other employees, or the job requires the employee to work with items and equipment that are on site. With respect to Samper, the Ninth Circuit said that all these requirements were satisfied considering the nature of being a neonatal nurse and the stakes involved for the hospital’s patients when the hospital is not staffed adequately.
A recent case that follows Samper is Mecca v. Florida Health Services Center, Inc., 2014 WL 408431 (M.D. Fla. February 3, 2014). In this case, the plaintiff was employed as a peripherally inserted central catheter nurse. Such a nurse inserts a peripherally inserted central catheter line into patients, which is an intravenous catheter that is typically inserted through a large vein generally in a patient’s upper arm and then threaded into the patient until it rests in the body directly next to the patient’s heart. It is a job that requires adherence to proper procedures and strict sterile techniques in order to avoid high risks of infection. Mecca’s disability involved panic attacks and anxiety. The accommodation he sought was in the form of leave. With respect to his particular symptoms, they included nervousness, anxiety, incontinence, and sleeplessness, among other things. After several consecutive weeks on FMLA leave, he brought a medical note from the doctor releasing him to work three days a week for 8 to 12 hours a day. However, on his first day at work back from leave, he did not respond to any request for consults, which are requests to assess a patient to insert a line. He also left for the day prior to the end of his shift. After numerous communications with the human resources department indicating that he would be subject to discipline, including termination, for failing to respond to consults, he submitted his resignation. He subsequently applied for Social Security disability benefits claiming he was unable to work as of May 8, 2010 and he was successful in that application.
In finding for the hospital, the Middle District of Florida found Samper persuasive. It also found that the role of the nurse that did what he did was very similar to one of a neonatal nurse. Accordingly, the court found that attendance at work was an essential job function of his job. The court also found that the plaintiff by filing for Social Security Disability Income was judicially estopped from pursuing his ADA case since he did not give an explanation sufficient to warrant a reasonable juror to conclude that he could perform the essential functions of the job with or without reasonable accommodation notwithstanding the representations made in the application for Social Security Disability Income.
1. When trying to figure out whether an essential function of the job includes attendance, the first step should be to look at the Samper criteria.
2. Keep in mind that even a job that satisfies all these criteria upon initial review may not be a job where attendance is an essential function of the job. For example, the Fifth Circuit in Carmona v. Southwest Airlines Company, 604 F.3d 848 (5th Cir. 2010), held that a flight attendant for Southwest Airlines may not have been in a job where attendance was an essential function in light of the airlines extremely lenient attendance policy, which thereby created a question of fact for the jury to decide.
3. It would behoove the employer to have data to back up its contention with actual practice that attendance is an essential element of the job regardless of whether the particular job at issue meets the Samper criteria.
4. On the plaintiff’s side, if the plaintiff is taking on an ADA case, the plaintiff’s attorney needs to explain the risk of filing for Social Security Disability Income should the client be suggesting that that is something he or she wants to do. If the attorney is an SSDI attorney, that attorneys should make it a part of a routine part of his or her practice to explain how the filing of an SSDI claim may compromise a future ADA claim. Failure on the part of the plaintiff’s attorney or the SSDI attorney to make that explanation may lead to a legal malpractice claim. For a blog entry of mine discussing judicial estoppel, take a look at this particular blog entry. With respect to legal malpractice, I wrote an article on it for the DuPage County Bar Association Journal, The Brief. I expand on that article on pages 142-143 of my book. On the defense side, whenever a person sues for discrimination on the basis of disability in employment, it needs to be a discovery item as to whether that person filed an SSDI claim.
Service dogs and the Department of Justice regulations: can they be challenge successfully?
In a comment to the service dog v. therapy dog blog entry, I promised that I would follow-up with an exploration of whether the Department of Justice regulations with respect to service dogs and how they differ from therapy dogs and the corresponding difference in treatment with respect to the ADA, would survive a challenge under either the administrative procedure act or the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment to the U.S. Constitution. This blog discusses that.
It is very difficult for a regulation that has gone through proper rulemaking to be thrown out by the courts. For a regulation that has gone through proper rulemaking to be thrown out by the courts, that regulation must be found to be arbitrary, capricious, or manifestly contrary to the statute. Chevron, USA, Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. 467 U.S. 837, 844 (1984). Manifestly contrary to the statute is the easier term, but what does it mean for a regulation to be arbitrary and capricious? An agency action is arbitrary and capricious if the agency relies on factors that Congress did not intend for it to consider, offers an explanation for its decision that runs counter to the evidence before the agency, fails to consider an important aspect of the problem, or is so implausible that it cannot be ascribed to a difference in view of or the product of agency expertise. Air Transport Association of America, Inc. v. National Mediation Board, 719 F. Supp. 2d 26, 30 (D.C. Cir. 2010).
Does the Department of Justice meet this burden? They probably did. Whenever a final regulation comes into place, the agency is required to do a section by section analysis in response to public comments. As can be expected, the Department of Justice received extensive comments with respect to service dog v. therapy dogs. These comments were so extensive that the Department of Justice literally spends over 7 pages discussing the particular rules pertaining to service dogs, the comments submitted, and why the Department of Justice decided to do what it did. See e.g. Appendix a to Part 35-Guidance to Revision to ADA Regulation on Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Disability in State and Local Government Services at discussion of “service animal.” In the end, the Department of Justice says that it wants to make sure that any such dog is working (recognition and response), rather than providing comfort, and so long as that is the case, it doesn’t matter what the disability is. Id.
The harder question is whether such a distinction is contrary to the statutory intent of the ADA. As we know from a discussion of Olmstead, the ADA requires that people with disabilities be integrated into the community. Is the Department of Justice through this regulation violating that intent. In order to show that, the plaintiff would have to show that the choice the Department of Justice made in insisting that a dog engage in recognition and response rather than just comfort is a choice that Congress would not have sanctioned. Chevron 467 U.S. at 845. If that choice was a reasonable accommodation of conflicting policies committed to the agency’s care by statute, then the court will not disturb it. Id. Which one is it? Recognition and response v. comfort certainly seems like a reasonable distinction. However, that distinction may be narrower than it seems. For example, a person with anxiety may need just some kind of a cue so as to redirect themselves. Would simply looking at the dog do the trick or would the dog need to do something, however subtle, to redirect the person? That may depend upon the person. That “however subtle,” would that be enough to meet the recognition and response language of the Department of Justice? If not, an argument might be able to be made that the regulations is contrary to statutory intent because it is not allowing for the service animal to perform cognitive behavior therapy techniques (anything whatsoever that can be done that redirects the person so the attack doesn’t continue). In short, it is hard to believe that the Department of Justice regulation could be considered arbitrary and capricious considering their extensive response to all the comments that were sent into it, and considering the recognition and response standard that it came up with, which seems on its face to be reasonable. That said, there is a concern about whether the standard is not broad enough so as to allow for cognitive behavior therapy techniques (that name sounds a little bit scary, but it is really quite simple. For example, it may be as simple as when a person recognizes an attack is coming on, that they do breathing exercises or react to a visual cue from someone else or an animal).
What about the equal protection clause? The problem there is that we never know what category of equal protection jurisprudence persons with disabilities fall into. With respect to employment, per Board of Trustees of the University of Alabama v. Garrett , they fall into the rational basis class. With respect to accessing the courts, persons with disabilities fall into the intermediate scrutiny class or higher. We also know per Tennessee v. Lane, that the classification of persons with disabilities with respect to equal protection jurisprudence depends entirely upon the facts. What class would persons with disabilities fall into with respect to a Department of Justice regulation. If persons with disabilities would fall into the rational basis class, then the regulation would stand as the regulation is most probably a rational way to carry out the ADA. If persons with disabilities fall into the intermediate scrutiny class, then the Department of Justice would have to show that the regulation is based upon very good reasons. Could they show that? It’s possible they could, though the narrowness of the definition of recognition and response with respect to persons with psychiatric disabilities may be an issue. If the person with disabilities for these purposes was in the highest class, suspect class, then the Department of Justice would have to show a compelling reason for its definition. While it would be unlikely to Department of Justice could meet such a standard, it would also seem to be unlikely that persons with disabilities would fall into a suspect class for purposes of the Department of Justice regulations. With respect to deciding the class that persons with disabilities would fall into, it would be very helpful to know just what is the history of the federal government with respect to discriminating against persons with disabilities. We know from Tennessee v. Lane that there is an extensive history of the State’s discriminating against persons with disabilities. However, since this is a federal regulation, we would need to know what is the history of the federal government with respect to discriminating against persons with disabilities before we could begin to decide what equal protection class persons with disabilities would fall into with respect to this fact pattern. If the person with a disability could show that the Department of Justice regulation involves any of: basic constitutional guarantees, basic rights, class of cases implicating judicial services, or fundamental rights- Tennessee v. Lane 541 U.S. 509, 522, 524, 529, 531, 534 (2004)-, then the Department of Justice regulations would be much easier to challenge.
So, how can we break this down? With respect to the Department of Justice regulations, it’s hard to believe that the regulation could be considered arbitrary and capricious considering how the case law defines that phrase. It is possible that you could argue that the regulation goes beyond statutory intent since it seems to involve a distinction that may unduly restrict certain techniques oftentimes used by people with psychiatric/mental disabilities to deal with the situation, of which a service dog/comfort dog may play a critical role in. With respect to the equal protection clause, we need to figure out just what class persons with disabilities would fall into under this fact pattern. Unlike any other class of people, persons with disabilities equal protection class that they fall into depends entirely upon the facts. Id. at 530. In determining that, it would be very helpful to know just what is the history of the federal government with respect to discriminating against persons with disabilities. Then, we would also have to consider whether the regulation encompasses basic constitutional guarantees, basic rights, class of cases implicating judicial services, or fundamental rights. It would seem that for the Department of Justice regulation to fail under an equal protection clause analysis, the court would have to be convinced that persons with disabilities in the situation fall into a class of people higher than rational basis. For the reasons discussed above, even then, it still may be difficult to be successful in an equal protection challenge if people with disabilities were found to be in the intermediate scrutiny class, and it is hard to believe that in this scenario, people with disabilities would be found to be in the suspect class.
In short, a challenge to this regulation under the administrative procedure act is going to be really tough. The best approach is going to be to try to show that the service dog regulation is not consistent with the ADA’s statutory intent. With respect to the equal protection clause, due to the thoroughness of the response to comments from the Department of Justice, any equal protection challenge is going to be extremely difficult.
Finally, please note that this blog entry deals with title II and title III of the ADA strictly. The title I regulations, which are the obligation of the EEOC and not the Department of Justice, have not taken this approach with respect to service dogs and comfort dogs.

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