Court Opinion

ID: 9492029
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 14:30:30.7203+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:55:04.457645
License: Public Domain

EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I am not as sure as my colleagues that “persuasive justifications” (172 F.3d at *512505) support this circuit’s rule that receipt of Social Security disability benefits is compatible with a claim under the Americans with Disabilities Act seeking an accommodation, but incompatible with other claims that are tenable only if the plaintiff is fit to work. Compare Weigel v. Target Stores, 122 F.3d 461 (7th Cir.1997); McCreary v. Libbey-Owens-Ford Co., 132 F.3d 1159 (7th Cir.1997); Haschmann v. Time Warner Entertainment Co., 151 F.3d 591 (7th Cir.1998); and Flowers v. Komatsu Mining Systems, Inc., 165 F.3d 554 (7th Cir.1999), with DeGuiseppe v. Bellwood, 68 F.3d 187 (7th Cir.1995). I am not disposed to upset the current status of circuit law, for the Supreme Court will have its say soon enough. Cleveland v. Policy Management Systems Corp., 120 F.3d 513 (5th Cir.1997), cert. granted, - U.S. -, 119 S.Ct. 39, 142 L.Ed.2d 30 (1998) (argued Feb. 24, 1999). But I would not go out of my way to endorse that status. Wilson loses under this circuit’s law, for reasons given in the court’s opinion, which I join except to the extent of the reservations expressed here.
An applicant for Social Security disability benefits could say that he is disabled in law even though not disabled in fact. Disability benefits are awarded to persons with certain conditions (such as blindness) or a combination of conditions and age (for example, illiterate and over 50, coupled with medical inability to do more than sedentary work). The economy may contain a few thousand jobs such persons can do, but the federal bureaucracy deems the effort to identify which of these people could work sufficiently unpromising that it awards benefits to all. A person who applies for and receives benefits on this categorical basis claims that he is disabled in a legal sense only. If an illiterate person over 50 with a back problem locates a job he can perform, the employer can’t say “no” on the basis of the back problem; that would violate the ada, and not simply because the ada requires employers to make accommodations. My hypothetical person would be able to work even without an accommodation. So this person would be entitled to relief if a private employer said something along the lines of “we don’t hire people with back problems.” Similarly, some people are able by exceptional effort to rise above their disabilities even though the Social Security Administration thinks that most similar persons are unable to work. Again the ada would protect such a person who located a job, notwithstanding earlier receipt of disability benefits.
But an applicant for Social Security disability benefits also might say that he is disabled in fact, suffering from a medical condition so severe that he cannot do the work an employer requires. This was the sort of application filed by the plaintiff in Haschmann, but we held, following the law established by Weigel, that Hasch-mann could pursue an ada suit even though she told the Social Security Administration that she was too afflicted to show up for work.
The Solicitor General’s brief in Cleveland distinguishes between the application for Social Security benefits and the factual representations made in the application. The application itself may be designed to take advantage of public largess that does not depend on factual inability to work and therefore does not preclude litigation under some other statute; but factual representations made in an application may defeat a claim under that other law. This seems to me a sensible resolution of a difficult problem, and if adopted it would be as applicable to a claim like Wilson’s as it would be to a claim for accommodation. Some language in McCreary, and more in Flowers, nudges this circuit in that direction — though it is hard to square with more absolutist language in Weigel.
To decide this case, however, all we must do is choose between competing views of Wilson’s abilities. Wilson’s submission is that she is able to work and was let go only because she complained about sexual harassment by other employees. *513Chrysler’s is that she was let go because she was no longer able to work. Wilson’s own statements and conduct enable us to choose reliably between these views.
Wilson represented to the Social Security Administration that she suffers from paranoid schizophrenia. Paranoid schizophrenia is a “listed impairment” that made a grant of disability benefits automatic, 20 C.F.R. § 220, App. 1, 12.03, but this does not imply that her disability is purely legal. Paranoid schizophrenia often entails the sort of violent outbursts (or threats of violence) that an employer need not accommodate. See Palmer v. Circuit Court of Cook County, 117 F.3d 351 (7th Cir.1997). Wilson’s contention that Chrysler fired her because she made a claim of sex discrimination, rather than because of inability to work, implies that Chrysler retains in its labor force paranoid schizophrenics who have not filed charges of sex discrimination, yet Wilson does not contend that she has found any such person on Chrysler’s rolls. Moreover if, as she contends, her medical problems do not impair her ability to work, then she has opportunities elsewhere in the economy; but as far as the record reveals (and as far as Wilson’s own lawyer is aware), she has not even applied for a job and has not done a single day’s work since June 1991. This speaks volumes.
Wilson’s current contention — that she applied for disability benefits only because Chrysler threatened to cut her benefits under the collective bargaining agreement — does not explain her failure to seek and obtain other work. Nor does it justify her conduct. Our legal system offers many ways to contest an employer’s errors or improper demands; lying to the government to get money from the Treasury is not among them. A court therefore is entitled to assume that Wilson told the truth when obtaining disability benefits. The nature of her condition, coupled with her decision to exit the labor force, supports a grant of summary judgment for Chrysler on the retaliation theory, no matter how Cleveland turns out in the Supreme Court.