Opinion ID: 3039151
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Prerequisites

Text: [1] The question of whether there is a named plaintiff who may maintain this suit turns, in the first instance, on whether there is such an individual who has statutory standing to pursue this litigation. Title I of the ADA states that “any person alleging discrimination on the basis of disability in violation of any provision of this chapter” shall have the “powers, remedies, and procedures set forth” in, inter alia, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-5, which applies to Title VII employment discrimination claims. 42 U.S.C. § 12117(a). Section 2000e-5, in turn, provides that any “person claiming to be aggrieved” may bring suit. § 2000e-5(f)(1). The Sixth Circuit has stated that “such broad language in the enforcement provision” of the ADA “evinces a congressional intention to define standing to bring a private action . . . as broadly as is permitted by Article III of the Constitution.” MX Group, Inc. v. City of Covington, 293 F.3d 326, 334 (6th Cir. 2002)) (internal quotation marks omitted) (considering Title II of the ADA and the Rehabilitation Act, the former of which uses the “person alleging discrimination” language in its enforcement provision and the latter of which uses the “person aggrieved” language in its enforcement provision). We agree with the Sixth Circuit that to establish standing in this case under the ADA, Bates need only establish the same prerequisites needed for Article III standing.7 See Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 560-61 (1992) (holding that a plaintiff must fulfill three 7 We do not decide whether prudential concerns limit third-party standing under the ADA, as that issue is not before us. Bates alleges that class members, not third parties, were the victims of the discrimination at issue. See Leibovitz v. N.Y. City Transit Auth., 252 F.3d 179, 186 (2d Cir. 2001) (declining to decide the same issue in a Title VII case for similar reasons); Patee v. Pac. Nw. Bell Tel., 803 F.2d 476, 478 (9th Cir. 1986) (holding that prudential concerns limit standing in Title VII cases). BATES v. UNITED PARCEL SERVICE 17487 requirements — injury in fact, causation, and redressability — to establish Article III standing). [2] When the plaintiff is a class, the class must establish that at least one named plaintiff has standing in order for the entire class to have standing. See Casey v. Lewis, 4 F.3d 1516, 1519, 1524 (9th Cir. 1993). Our question, therefore, is whether Oloyede meets the statutory standing requirement.8 Our inquiry is limited to the first prong of analysis9 — namely, whether Oloyede suffered an injury because of the categorical bar posed by the DOT hearing standard that is sufficiently “concrete and particularized” and “actual or imminent” to satisfy the “injury in fact” requirement. See Lujan, 504 U.S. at 560-61. Determining whether Oloyede was “injured” requires examining whether Oloyede was “qualified” for the driving position he desired in the sense that, aside from the DOT standard he is challenging and all prerequisites connected to that standard, he meets the basic job requirements for the desired position. In Melendez, the Seventh Circuit held that, to establish standing to bring a Title VII disparate impact case, a plaintiff show she is “qualified” in this same sense, reasoning: Absent direct evidence showing that a plaintiff was not hired . . . because of a discriminatory employ- ment practice, we assume that an unqualified plaintiff was not hired or promoted for the obvious reason — that he was unqualified. Such a plaintiff would 8 Because we affirm the district court’s findings of fact with respect to Oloyede, we do not consider the district court’s findings with respect to Habib. 9 The second and third elements of the standing test are not at issue. If Oloyede suffered injury, there was a causal connection between that injury and UPS’s policy, and the injury is redressable at least by appropriate prospective relief. Whether retrospective damages will be available is a question not yet decided by the district court, so we do not address the question. 17488 BATES v. UNITED PARCEL SERVICE have no standing to sue . . . , for he could not claim that he was injured, much less affected, by defen- dant’s use of an employment practice with an allegedly disparate impact. 79 F.3d at 668; see also Coe v. Yellow Freight Sys., Inc., 646 F.2d 444, 451 (10th Cir. 1981) (holding the same). Similarly, absent evidence that a plaintiff challenging a facially discriminatory qualification standard in an ADA case fulfilled those prerequisites for the position not connected to the challenged qualification standard, the plaintiff could not claim he was aggrieved by the challenged qualification standard. Cf. Long v. Coast Resorts, Inc., 267 F.3d 918, 924 (9th Cir. 2001) (holding that plaintiffs did not have standing as “person[s] aggrieved” to challenge alleged ADA violations affecting only employees of a casino because plaintiffs were not themselves employees); Casey, 4 F.3d at 1524 (holding that a class of prison inmates failed to establish that any named plaintiff suffered actual injury from a prison policy prohibiting HIVpositive individuals from obtaining employment in its foodservice department because the class did not show that any named plaintiff was HIV-positive, was interested in a foodservice job, or applied for one). Here, the district court found as a fact, based on the record before it, that “Oloyede’s qualifications are sufficient to allow [him] to proceed to the next step of UPS’s driver evaluation and training.” The district court based this ultimate conclusion on, inter alia, its finding that Oloyede’s driving record at the time of trial satisfied the “clean driving record” requirement in the pertinent UPS district, which states that individuals must have no accidents or moving violations within the previous year, no convictions for driving while intoxicated within the previous three years, and no more than three moving violations in the previous three years. In addition, the district court found that Oloyede has been employed by UPS since 1991 and that he first bid on a driving BATES v. UNITED PARCEL SERVICE 17489 position in 1998, when, the record establishes, he held a job from which he was qualified to bid on a driver position.10 Oloyede has bid on or expressed an interest in driving positions several times since then, most recently in 2003. Oloyede currently has an “Article 22.3” position, which, according to the record, means that he is currently contractually barred from bidding on driving positions. The district court found, however, that in 2000, Oloyede’s supervisor told him that he would need to pass a hearing exam to become a package-car driver. The court further found that, in general, “[i]f an applicant cannot satisfy the DOT hearing standard, he or she will not be allowed to move on to UPS’s driver training,” indicating that no direct assessment of Oloyde’s driving ability was ever made. [3] That Oloyede is not currently employed in a position from which he is eligible to bid for a driving job is of no moment. Oloyede was informed that he could not drive for UPS under any circumstances. As a result, he was deterred from remaining in a driver-eligible position and sought instead to advance his career in some other fashion. An individual thus influenced by an allegedly discriminatory policy to avoid humiliating circumstances — here, languishing in a dead-end position — is still aggrieved by that policy if he maintains a continuing interest in the benefit to which access has been denied — here, the opportunity to be individually assessed for the package-car driver position. That Oloyede accepted a position prohibiting him from applying for a job he knew he could not have does not detract from the conclusion that he was injured by the policy he challenges. See Pickern v. Holiday Quality Foods Inc., 293 F.3d 1133, 1137-38 (9th Cir. 2002) (holding that a disabled individual deterred from patronizing a public accommodation due to a defendant’s fail10 The class certified by the district court covers individuals who “have been employed by and/or applied for employment with United Parcel Service (UPS) at any time since June 25, 1997 up through the conclusion of this action.” 17490 BATES v. UNITED PARCEL SERVICE ure to comply with the ADA has suffered an “injury in fact”); cf. Teamsters, 431 U.S. at 365 (“If an employer should announce his policy of discrimination by a sign reading ‘Whites Only’ on the hiring-office door, his victims would not be limited to the few who ignored the sign and subjected themselves to personal rebuffs.”).11 How Oloyede’s injury is to be remedied if found to result from a violation of the ADA is a question to be addressed at the relief stage, but does not affect his ability to challenge the DOT standard that stood in the way of his desired advancement.12