Opinion ID: 200090
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Title II and the Constitution

Text: 29 As the Sixth Circuit pointed out in Popovich, Title II implicates a number of different constitutional protections. 276 F.3d at 813. Popovich held that a state court's refusal to provide a hearing-impaired father with accommodations that would permit him to participate in the proceedings determining the custody of his daughter — and its subsequent alleged retaliation against him for asserting his rights under the ADA — violated due process. Id. at 813-16. As applied to that refusal, the ADA enforced Popovich's due process rights. Similarly, the Second Circuit's reasoning in Garcia that individuals may sue a state under the ADA when they can show that state action was motivated by discriminatory animus or ill will, 280 F.3d at 111-12, views the ADA as enforcing the individual right set forth in City of Cleburne. 30 The government says correctly that Title II also functions to enforce other constitutional rights, including the rights to vote, ... to petition officials for redress of grievances, to receive due process from law enforcement officials, and to be confined where conditions are humane. 6 In any given case in which a state asserts immunity from private suit under Title II, one or more of these rights may be at stake. If they are, a court considering the immunity defense can review Title II as a straightforward remedy for the violation of rights under the Constitution as interpreted by the courts, rather than applying the more complex analysis required to determine whether Congress has exceeded its bounds when it has created new rights against state action. See Varner v. Ill. State Univ., 226 F.3d 927, 935-36 (7th Cir.2000) (holding that although Congress did not make specific findings of unconstitutional state action relevant to the Equal Pay Act, the Act nevertheless successfully abrogated state immunity because it prohibited very little constitutional conduct); Kovacevich v. Kent State Univ., 224 F.3d 806, 820 n. 6 (6th Cir.2000) (Because ... the EPA does not substantially overreach into largely constitutional activity in the first place, there is no need to search the legislative record as in Kimel. ); see also Florida Prepaid, 527 U.S. at 646-47 (noting that Congress in the challenged statute did nothing to limit the coverage of the Act to cases involving arguable constitutional violations). 7 31 Thus, we do not rely in this case on the legislative record amassed by Congress in passing Title II of the ADA. The record is substantial, and contains many examples of action by the states themselves that may have violated various provisions of the Constitution. See generally Garrett, 531 U.S. at 391-424 (appendix to opinion of Breyer, J., dissenting). It may be that the legislative record taken as a whole supports Congress's conclusion that the enactment of Title II taken as a whole, including the abrogation of state immunity, is within the section five power. That is the question reserved by the Court in Garrett, and that would be the question relevant to a challenge to Title II as applied to constitutional state action. It might also be that the legislative record taken as a whole supports some of Congress's decisions to render states liable for some acts not in violation of the Constitution, but not others. That is the position of the Second Circuit. See Garcia, 280 F.3d at 112. 32 As additional support for our decision, we note that in the years since the Supreme Court decided the landmark case of Estelle v. Gamble, 429 U.S. 97, 103-05, 97 S.Ct. 285, 50 L.Ed.2d 251 (1976), which recognized inmates' constitutional right to medical care under the Eighth Amendment, the federal courts have recognized many constitutional violations that overlap with Title II as it is applied to prisons. See, e.g., Weeks v. Chaboudy, 984 F.2d 185 (6th Cir.1993) (holding a prison medical director who did not provide a paraplegic inmate with a wheelchair liable for damages under the Eighth Amendment); LaFaut v. Smith, 834 F.2d 389, 392-94 (4th Cir.1987) (Powell, J., sitting by designation) (holding that the failure to provide an inmate with an accessible toilet violated the Eighth Amendment); Maclin v. Freake, 650 F.2d 885, 889 (7th Cir.1981) (per curiam) (concluding that alleging failure to provide physical therapy for a paraplegic inmate stated a colorable claim of an Eighth Amendment violation); see also M. Mushlin, Rights of Prisoners § 3.15, at 167 n. 199 (2d ed. 1993 & Supp.2001) (collecting cases). These cases represent just the sort of confirming judicial documentation that Justices Kennedy and O'Connor identified in Garrett as absent for Title I. 531 U.S. at 376 (Kennedy, J., concurring). As Title II is applied to the facts of this case, it protects the constitutional rights of the disabled, and specifically the rights of disabled prison inmates, against discrimination and against cruel and unusual punishment. 33 Accordingly, we hold that Congress acted within its powers in subjecting the states to private suit under Title II of the ADA, at least as that Title is applied to cases in which a court identifies a constitutional violation by the state. We do not need to reach the question of whether Congress acted within its power in subjecting states to private suit under the full scope of Title II. We also do not need to reach the different question of whether, as the Second Circuit concluded in Garcia, Congress's power might have extended to some of Title II's nonconstitutional rules but not to others. 8 34