Opinion ID: 2999760
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Rehabilitation Act of 1973

Text: The Rehabilitation Act, 29 U.S.C. § 701 et seq., applies to federal government agencies as well as organizations that receive federal funds. The parties in this case stipulated that the City receives federal funding and is therefore covered by the Rehabilitation Act. Much of the Rehabilitation Act focuses on employment, but section 504 broadly covers other types of programs and activities as well. Section 504(a) provides that “[n]o otherwise qualified individual with a disability in the United States . . . shall, solely by reason of her or his disability, be excluded from the participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance . . . .” 29 U.S.C. § 794(a). The Rehabilitation Act does not contain a general accommodation requirement. Rather, in implementing the Rehabilitation Act,3 the Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) promulgated several regulations that specifically require reasonable accommodations. See Traynor 3 Courts tend to look to the Rehabilitation Act’s implementing regulations in interpreting other disability laws such as the ADA and the FHAA. See, e.g., Bragdon v. Abbott, 524 U.S. 624, 63132 (1998) (stating that courts are required to “construe the ADA to grant at least as much protection as provided by the regulations implementing the Rehabilitation Act”); see also 42 U.S.C. § 12201 (“Except as otherwise provided in this chapter, nothing in this chapter shall be construed to apply a lesser standard than the standards applied under title V of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (29 U.S.C. § 790 et seq.) or the regulations issued by Federal agencies pursuant to such title.”). 16 No. 04-1966 v. Turnage, 485 U.S. 535, 550 n.10 (1988) (observing that these regulations “were drafted with the oversight and approval of Congress and therefore constitute an important source of guidance on the meaning of § 504”) (internal quotation marks and citations omitted)). The most pertinent of these regulations requires recipients of federal funds to “make reasonable accommodation to the known physical or mental limitations of an otherwise qualified handicapped applicant or employee unless the recipient can demonstrate that the accommodation would impose an undue hardship on the operation of its program.” 28 C.F.R. § 41.53. The regulation’s use of the terms “applicant or employee” suggests that it pertains most directly to workplace accommodation, rather than to the modification of a city’s zoning practices. Nevertheless, the Supreme Court has located a duty to accommodate in the statute generally. In Alexander v. Choate, 469 U.S. 287 (1985), handicapped individuals challenged a proposal by the State of Tennessee to reduce the number of inpatient hospital days that the state Medicaid program would pay hospitals on behalf of Medicaid recipients. Because handicapped individuals spend more time in hospitals, on average, than the non-disabled, the plaintiffs argued that Tennessee’s proposal had a disproportionate effect on the disabled and hence was discriminatory in violation of section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. After rejecting Tennessee’s argument that federal law prohibits only intentional discrimination against the handicapped, the Court explained that “ ‘a refusal to modify an existing program might become unreasonable and discriminatory.’” Id. at 300 (quoting Southeastern Cmty. Coll. v. Davis, 442 U.S. 397, 413 (1979)). The Rehabilitation Act’s promise of “meaningful access” to state benefits, according to the Court, means that “reasonable accommodations in the grantee’s program or benefit may have to be made.” Id. at No. 04-1966 17 301. However, in applying this principle, the Court in Choate held that Tennessee’s proposal, in fact, did not deny the plaintiffs “meaningful access” to Medicaid services. This was because “[t]he new limitation [did] not invoke criteria that have a particular exclusionary effect on the handicapped; the reduction, neutral on its face, [did] not distinguish between those whose coverage will be reduced and those whose coverage will not on the basis of any test, judgment, or trait that the handicapped as a class are less capable of meeting or less likely of having.” Id. at 302. More specifically, the Court noted that there was no “suggestion” in the record “that the illnesses uniquely associated with the handicapped or occurring with greater frequency among them cannot be effectively treated, at least in part, with fewer than 14 days’ coverage.” Id. n.22. In short, the Court held that, because the denial of benefits was not linked in any way to the plaintiffs’ particular disabilities, Tennessee’s hospital-day reduction, even when left unmodified, did not offend the Rehabilitation Act. Following Choate, several courts of appeals have adopted the view that the Rehabilitation Act requires public entities to modify federally assisted programs if such a modification is necessary to ensure that the disabled have equal access to the benefits of that program. See, e.g., Henrietta D. v. Bloomberg, 331 F.3d 261, 274-75 (2d Cir. 2003). These circuits, including ours, also follow the corollary principle implicit in the Choate decision that the Rehabilitation Act helps disabled individuals obtain access to benefits only when they would have difficulty obtaining those benefits “by reason of” their disabilities, and not because of some quality that they share generally with the public. See, e.g., id. at 276-79 (acknowledging “that the ADA and the 18 No. 04-1966 Rehabilitation Act are addressed to rules that hurt people with disabilities by reason of their handicap, rather than that hurt them solely by virtue of what they have in common with other people” (internal quotation marks, citations, alterations and emphasis omitted)); Washington v. Indiana High Sch. Athletic Assoc., 181 F.3d 840, 848 (7th Cir. 1999) (noting that, in a Rehabilitation Act modification claim, “[t]here must be a causal connection between the disability and [the plaintiff’s] ineligibility”); Forest City Daly Housing v. Town of N. Hempstead, 175 F.3d 144, 152 (2d Cir. 1999) (holding that, for claims under the FHAA, the ADA and the Rehabilitation Act, a proposed accommodation must be “necessary in light of the disabilities” of the plaintiffs; and dismissing claims because “no analogous housing opportunity exist[ed] for persons without disabilities” (internal quotation marks omitted)); Crowder v. Kitagawa, 81 F.3d 1480, 1485 (9th Cir. 1996) (relying on Choate to require Hawaii to modify a law that required carnivorous animals entering the state, including guide dogs, to be quarantined for 120 days because the quarantine discriminated against the visually impaired “by reason of their disability”); United States v. Bd. of Trs. of the Univ. of Alabama, 908 F.2d 740, 748 (11th Cir. 1990) (recognizing that Choate requires an unmodified program to bear more heavily on the disabled on account of their disability and distinguishing the case of a deaf student who, unlike his non-handicapped peers, is less likely to benefit from his classes without a sign-language interpreter).