Court Opinion

ID: 9497059
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:42:25.743256+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:57:58.829592
License: Public Domain

MARTHA CRAIG DAUGHTREY,
Circuit Judge, dissenting.
In construing statutes, we are frequently admonished to avoid interpretations that will produce absurd results. In stretching the meaning, intuitive or as statutorily defined, of the term “developmental disability” to cover the effect of a traumatic brain injury suffered spontaneously by a fully-functioning 20-year-old, however, the majority in this ease has failed to heed the admonition. To demonstrate the absurdity of this interpretation of the statute at issue here, one need only ask: Why would Congress provide protection under the Developmental Disabilities Assistance and Bill of Rights Act, 42 U.S.C. § 15043, to an adult who suffers such an injury one day short of his or her twenty-second birthday, but not to the same person injured in exactly the same manner 24 hours later? The answer is, of course, as the district judge held, that the Act was never meant to apply to individuals in Martin Bentley’s situation — the holder of a GED, who served two years in the United States Army and then became a long-distance truck driver, and who, according to the majority, retains the “ ‘adequate cognitive ability’ to speak for himself ... and express! ] his wishes in an ‘unequivocal consistent manner’.”
It is not surprising that Congress initially attempted to describe the term “developmental disability” in terms of a diagnosis but then abandoned the effort. The term is a contemporary euphemism for “mental retardation,” which itself came into use in *353an effort to erase the stigma attached to much cruder descriptive terms used in the early part of the last century and before, terms such as “moron” (used to describe those with intelligence quotients ranging from 50-69), “imbecile” (having an IQ of 25-50), “idiot” (having an IQ under 25), and the like.
But there are many causes of mental retardation, and the disability can (but does not necessarily) accompany other conditions, such as cerebral palsy arid autism hence the effort to describe developmental disability in terms of function, rather than diagnosis. As the district court recognized, however, the key concept here is not “disability,” from which Mr. Bentley undoubtedly suffers. The key, rather, is the descriptive term “developmental,” referring obviously to an impairment that “manifests” itself over time and impedes an individual’s progress from childhood to post-adolescence and into adulthood, equipped with what are recognized as adequate skills to live independently and productively. Mr. Bentley was living independently, and presumably productively, at the time he became the victim of an unexpected and debilitating accident, one which unfortunately befalls other adults all too frequently but which does not implicate a potential for the denial of civil rights such as the statute in question here was designed to protect against.
Perhaps the problem here is merely poor legislative drafting, an impediment we sometimes face in trying rationally to construe statutes conceived by special interest groups, drafted by committees working under pressure to reach political consensus, and thereafter amended and made increasingly complex. If so, the majority has compounded the problem by reading a badly drafted statute too literally and has thereby reached what I believe is a result that Congress did not intend and would never have envisioned, had it been prescient enough to foresee the application of this civil rights statute to a situation such as the one before us. This seems obvious from the fact that this case presents itself as one of first impression, suggesting that the legislation has never been understood to apply to victims of sudden traumatic injury, regardless of age.
Despite my sympathy for Mr. Bentley’s disabled condition and my conviction that the plaintiff here is acting with the best of intentions, I would affirm the district court for the reasons set out in its memorandum opinion and deny relief.