Opinion ID: 4256284
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The ADA Generally Applies When Police

Text: Officers Make an Arrest As a threshold matter, we consider whether the ADA applies when police officers make an arrest. Although the question is debatable, we think the answer is generally yes.7 7 According to Haberle, even if her ADA claim against the Borough was meritless at the point of arrest, it should still survive because the Borough’s failure to establish a suitable training program is, by itself, a violation of the ADA. To support her theory, Haberle points to an opinion from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, Schorr v. Borough of Lemoyne, 243 F. Supp. 2d 232 (M.D. Pa. 2003). In Schorr, the court concluded that whether there was an ADA claim on the day of the arrest was 13 Our analysis begins with the statutory text. See Ross v. Blake, 136 S. Ct. 1850, 1856 (2016) (“Statutory interpretation, as we always say, begins with the text … .”). To successfully state a claim under Title II of the ADA, a person “must demonstrate: (1) he is a qualified individual; (2) with a disability; (3) [who] was excluded from participation in or denied the benefits of the services, programs, or activities of a public entity, or was subjected to discrimination by any such entity; (4) by reason of his disability.” Bowers v. Nat’l “irrelevant” because the purported injury did not occur the day of the police altercation but instead “occurred well before that day, when the … policy makers failed to institute [policies] to accommodate disabled individuals … by giving the officers the tools and resources to handle the situation peacefully.” Id. at 238. Schorr is a thoughtful effort to address difficult issues but, ultimately, its reasoning misses the mark because it is incompatible with the text of the ADA. As the District Court here correctly observed, an ADA violation occurs if and when a disabled individual is “excluded from participation in” or “denied the benefits of the services, programs, or activities of a public entity” or is “subjected to discrimination by any such entity.” (App. at 28 n.20 (quoting 42 U.S.C. § 12132).) A municipality’s failure to train its police is not actionable unless and until that failure leads directly to a denial of a needed accommodation or improper discrimination. It is the denial that gives rise to the claim. Thus, contrary to the assertion in Schorr that ADA deprivations could occur before the day of the problematic incident between the citizen and the police, it is the incident itself that must be the focus of attention. 14 Collegiate Athletic Ass’n, 475 F.3d 524, 553 n.32 (3d Cir. 2007).8 The first question, then, is whether arrestees can be “qualified individuals” under the ADA, and the best response is that they can, for there is nothing to categorically exclude them from the statute’s broad coverage.9 See Gorman v. 8 The language of the statute itself is, “no qualified individual with a disability shall, by reason of such disability, be excluded from participation in or be denied the benefits of the services, programs, or activities of a public entity, or be subjected to discrimination by any such entity.” 42 U.S.C. § 12132. 9 That arrestees can qualify does not, of course, mean that they necessarily will qualify. There remains a question whether a potentially violent person with mental health problems who, while possessing a gun, barricades himself in another person’s apartment is a “qualified individual” under the ADA. The ADA defines a “qualified individual with a disability” as “an individual with a disability who, with or without reasonable modifications to rules, policies, or practices, the removal of architectural, communication, or transportation barriers, or the provision of auxiliary aids and services, meets the essential eligibility requirements for the receipt of services or the participation in programs or activities provided by a public entity.” 42 U.S.C. § 12131(2). We have previously noted that a “significant risk test” has been used to determine whether an individual is qualified to receive protection under the analogous Rehabilitation Act. See New Directions Treatment Servs. v. City of Reading, 490 F.3d 293, 303 (3d Cir. 2007). Whether application of that same test in the ADA context is appropriate, however, is not 15 Bartch, 152 F.3d 907, 912-13 (8th Cir. 1998) (concluding that an arrestee could be a qualified individual under the ADA despite not having “‘volunteered’ to be arrested”); cf. Pa. Dep’t of Corr. v. Yeskey, 524 U.S. 206, 210-11 (1998) (noting that a state prisoner could be a “qualified individual” under the ADA even when participation in a service, program, or activity of the State is not voluntary). The second question is whether arrestees may have disabilities covered by the ADA, and the answer to that is clearly “yes.” See 42 U.S.C. § 12102(1) (defining “disability” for purposes of the ADA). Like the overall population, the subset of people who violate the law, or are suspected of such, will naturally include those with recognized disabilities. The dragnet, so to speak, gathers of every kind. Saving the third qualifying question for last, we next note that the fourth requirement, that the claimant has been excluded from a service, program, or activity or discriminated against by reason of his disability, is also one that can be satisfied in the context of an arrest. If the arrestee’s “disability ‘played a role in the … decisionmaking process and … had a determinative effect on the outcome of that process[,]’” i.e., if the arrestee’s disability was a “but for” cause of the deprivation or harm he suffered, then the fourth element of an ADA claim has been met. See CG v. Pa. Dep’t of Educ., 734 F.3d 229, 236 n.11 (3d Cir. 2013) (quoting New Directions Treatment Servs. v. City of Reading, 490 F.3d 293, 300 n.4 (3d Cir. 2007)). something that we need to address now. We reserve judgment on that issue for another day. 16 The most controversial question pertinent to whether the ADA applies when police officers are making arrests comes in the context of the statute’s third requirement. We must consider whether arrests made by police officers are “services, programs, or activities of a public entity,” or alternatively, whether police officers may be liable under the ADA for “subject[ing a qualified individual] to discrimination” while effectuating an arrest. 42 U.S.C. § 12132. The text of the ADA is deliberately broad and police departments “fall[] ‘squarely within the statutory definition of a “public entity.”’” Gorman, 152 F.3d at 912 (quoting Yeskey, 524 U.S. at 210); see 42 U.S.C. § 12131(1)(A)-(B) (defining “public entity” to include, among other things, “any State or local government” and “any department, agency, special purpose district, or other instrumentality of a State or States or local government”); see also Yeskey, 524 U.S. at 209-10 (concluding that state prisons are public entities under the ADA because “the ADA plainly covers state institutions …”). Furthermore, persuasive precedent indicates that the ADA’s reference to “the services, programs, and activities of a public entity” should likewise be interpreted broadly “to ‘encompass[] virtually everything that a public entity does.’” Babcock v. Michigan, 812 F.3d 531, 540 (6th Cir. 2016) (alteration in original) (quoting Johnson v. City of Saline, 151 F.3d 564, 569 (6th Cir. 1998)); see also Yeskey v. Comm. of Pa. Dep’t of Corr., 118 F.3d 168, 171 (3d Cir. 1997) (noting that similar “broad language” in the ADA’s implementing regulations was “intended to appl[y] to anything a public entity does” (alteration in original) (internal quotation marks omitted)), aff’d, 524 U.S. 206 (1998). Nevertheless, courts 17 across the country are divided on whether police fieldwork and arrests can rightly be called “services, programs, or activities of a public entity … .” 42 U.S.C. § 12132.10 Fortunately, we do not need to resolve that issue in this case, because § 12132 is framed in the alternative and we can look instead to the second phrase, namely, to whether the arrestee was “subjected to discrimination” by the police. Id.; see also Bircoll v. Miami-Dade Cty., 480 F.3d 1072, 1084 (11th Cir. 2007) (concluding that the court did not need to decide “whether police conduct during an arrest is a program, service, or activity covered by the ADA” because a plaintiff “could still attempt to show an ADA claim under the final clause in the Title II statute”). The “subjected to discrimination” phrase in Title II is “a catch-all phrase that prohibits all discrimination by a public entity, regardless of the context.” Bircoll, 480 F.3d at 1085 (quoting Bledsoe v. Palm Beach Cty. Soil & Water Conservation Dist., 133 F.3d 816, 821-22 (11th Cir. 1998)); accord Seremeth v. Bd. of Cty. Comm’rs Frederick Cty., 673 F.3d 333, 338 (4th Cir. 2012); Innovative Health Sys., Inc. v. City of White Plains, 117 F.3d 37, 44-45 (2d Cir. 1997), overruled on other grounds by Zervos v. Verizon N.Y., Inc., 252 F.3d 163 (2d Cir. 2001). 10 The Supreme Court had granted certiorari to address that question, City & Cty. of San Francisco v. Sheehan, __ U.S. __, 135 S. Ct. 702 (2014), but it later dismissed the writ as improvidently granted. City & Cty. of San Francisco v. Sheehan, __ U.S. __, 135 S. Ct. 1765, 1773-74 (2015). The issue thus continues to divide some federal courts. See generally Robyn Levin, Note, Responsiveness to Difference: ADA Accommodations in the Course of an Arrest, 69 Stan. L. Rev. 269 (2017) (compiling cases). 18 Moreover, we have said that “[d]iscrimination under the ADA encompasses not only adverse actions motivated by prejudice and fear of disabilities, but also includes failing to make reasonable accommodations for a plaintiff’s disabilities.” Taylor v. Phoenixville Sch. Dist., 184 F.3d 296, 306 (3d Cir. 1999). It follows, then, that police officers may violate the ADA when making an arrest by failing to provide reasonable accommodations for a qualified arrestee’s disability, thus subjecting him to discrimination. Given that catchall, we believe that the ADA can indeed apply to police conduct during an arrest. That conclusion, which is suggested by the wide scope of the ADA’s text, has support from our sister circuits. See, e.g., Sheehan, 743 F.3d at 1217 (“Title II of the [ADA] applies to arrests.”); Roberts v. City of Omaha, 723 F.3d 966, 973 (8th Cir. 2013) (“[T]he ADA … appl[ies] to law enforcement officers taking disabled suspects into custody.”). Even though there is some disagreement concerning the point during a law enforcement encounter at which the ADA applies to police conduct, no court of appeals has held that the ADA does not apply at all. See, e.g., Hainze v. Richards, 207 F.3d 795, 801 (5th Cir. 2000) (holding “that Title II does not apply to an officer’s on-the-street responses to reported disturbances or other incidents … prior to the officer’s securing the scene and ensuring that there is no threat to human life”); Gohier v. Enright, 186 F.3d 1216, 1221 (10th Cir. 1999) (“[A] broad rule categorically excluding arrests from the scope of Title II … is not the law.”).11 11 A successful ADA claim demands more than an allegation of an arrest of a qualified individual with a disability. The implementing regulations for the ADA make 19