Court Opinion

ID: 9493924
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 15:23:26.634931+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:56:06.614870
License: Public Domain

EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I join the court’s opinion but add a thought about the significance of the disability benefits that Lawson used to receive.
Lawson contends that the award of disability benefits demonstrates (or at least strongly implies) that he is disabled for purposes of the adá. To the extent that these benefits (and the administrative determination underlying them) show “a record of such an impairment”, 42 U.S.C. § 12102(2)(B), this contention is straightforward. The ada does not let an employer use past disability as a reason for refusing to evaluate current abilities; thus it could not say that it does not hire persons who have ever received disability benefits. CSX did not make this its official policy but came close by announcing that it wanted to hire only persons with steady work histories. If Lawson could not work in the past (and was receiving disability benefits on that account) but has improved and can work now (as the Social Security Administration believes), then CSX’s work-history filter discriminates on account of Lawson’s “record of impairment” memorialized in *933the award of disability benefits. Although CSX contends that it made exceptions (and would have allowed a year of flipping burgers to suffice), on summary judgment we must draw the inferences in Lawson’s favor.
To the extent that Lawson believes the decisions of the Social Security Administration to have any other significance, I am skeptical. Cleveland v. Policy Management Systems Corp., 526 U.S. 795, 119 S.Ct. 1597, 143 L.Ed.2d 966 (1999), holds that the definition of disability under the Social Security program differs from the definition of disability under the ada, so that receipt of Social Security benefits does not necessarily establish that a person is not “a qualified individual with a disability” under the ada. See 42 U.S.C. § 12112(a). Although the difference in legal standards — and in the identity of the decisionmaker (an administrative law judge versus a federal court) — means that the award of benefits is not conclusive, the representations a person makes in an effort to obtain benefits may be significant. A person who tells the ssa that he is bedridden, for example, can’t pursue an ada claim that depends on his being spry. This is one point of Wilson v. Chrysler Corp., 172 F.3d 500 (7th Cir.1999), which held that an employee’s representation to the Social Security Administration that she is a paranoid schizophrenic precluded her argument in employment litigation that she is mentally stable and fit to work. Neither Lawson nor CSX seems interested in making anything of Lawson’s representations to the agency, however; instead Lawson wants to use the unelaborated award of benefits to show that he is today a person “with a disability” under § 12112(a), and that step is hard to reconcile with Cleveland.
Treating the ssa’s decision as something that matters independent of “a record of impairment” would send district courts (and juries) on a lot of byways. If a grant of disability benefits boosts an employee’s claim, then a denial also would be admissible at the employer’s behest. Judges then would need to tell juries what the ssa’s standards are, how they differ from the standards under the ada, what to make of the fact that Social Security proceedings are non-adversarial (and that employers are not parties to them), and so on. Cleveland suggests that, this is a path best avoided. Presumably the alj’s opinion granting (or denying) disability benefits would be admissible and become a topic of debate at trial; and if benefits were granted (or denied) without an alj’s involvement, things might be even murkier.
Litigants often try to introduce agency dispositions in suits under Title VII, but courts have concluded that neither a finding by the eeoc that discrimination occurred, nor a finding of no discrimination, has legal consequences or would promote accurate decisionmaking by juries. Lang v. Kohl’s Food Stores, Inc., 217 F.3d 919 (7th Cir.2000), collects a few of these decisions. I don’t see any reason to treat agency determinations differently under the ada. Using disability benefits solely to demonstrate “a record” of impairment avoids these problems. And if the employer concedes that the plaintiff has “a record” of impairment, then it should be possible to keep the administrative decision out of evidence altogether. Cf. Old Chief v. United States, 519 U.S. 172, 117 S.Ct. 644, 136 L.Ed.2d 574 (1997).