NYT Editorial on Lane v.
From:jfa@jfanow.org
"NYT Editorial on Lane v.
From the New York Times:
EDITORIAL OBSERVER
Can Disabled
People Be Forced to Crawl Up the Courthouse
Steps?
By ADAM COHEN
problem. His hearing was on the second floor, there was
no
elevator, and the judge said he had better get upstairs.
to get out of his wheelchair and crawl up two flights of
stairs. "On a pain scale of 1 to 10, it was way past
10,"
he says.
While
courthouse employees "stood at the top of the stairs
and
laughed at me." His case was not heard in the
morning
session, he says, and at the lunch break he crawled back
down. That afternoon, when he refused to crawl upstairs
again, he was arrested for failing to appear, and put in
jail.
Anyone looking for evidence that a mean mood has
descended
on the nation need only stop by the Supreme Court Tuesday
for the arguments in
disabled people are suing
With Disabilities Act for failing to make its courthouses
accessible.
is belittling the claims, and insisting it has immunity
to
the suit.
Incredibly, there is a real chance the Supreme Court will
side with
been on a misguided "federalism" campaign,
denying
Congress's power to protect the environment, combat gun
violence and ban discrimination. It has justified these
rulings by saying it has to protect the
"dignity" of the
states. The discrimination in
horrific, however, it may help the court to grasp the
possible consequences of that stand - including its
effect
on the dignity of people like
accident that led to his court appearance.
had had minor run-ins with the law before, was not
popular
with the courthouse crowd in his rural
The employees who laughed at him offered to carry him
upstairs, he says, but he was afraid they would
intentionally drop him. (The judge who presided that day
is
no longer alive; the court clerk says she was not
present.)
A second plaintiff, Beverly Jones, supports her two
children by working as a court reporter. Ms. Jones, who
uses a wheelchair, has turned down jobs in some of the 23
a court without an accessible bathroom, she says, the
judge
had to pick her up and place her on the toilet. Another
time, one of the court employees carrying her upstairs
slipped. By chance she fell into someone else, she says,
but she nearly fell all the way down.
Ralph Ramsey, a third plaintiff, was a defendant in a
civil
suit. When he got to court, he sent word to the judge
that
his disability prevented him from getting to the second-
floor courtroom. The case went on without him. An
opposing
attorney later came down and told Mr. Ramsey, as he
passed
by, that his client had just won a $1,500 judgment
against
him.
In their briefs, the states show little sympathy for the
disabled plaintiffs. Court reporters like Ms. Jones have
no
constitutional right, they say, to "ply their
trade" in
accessible courthouses. Nor, they insist, does
have an absolute right to attend his own criminal trial.
As
support, they cite a case in which a defendant was
removed
after repeatedly interrupting his trial and threatening
to
kill the judge. In any case, the states argue,
offered to "assist him upstairs," the offer
rejected because he feared he would be purposely dropped.
But their main argument is states' rights - that the
federal government has no power to protect the disabled
this way. The states insist the 11th Amendment gives them
immunity from suits for damages under the A.D.A. They
cite
the Supreme Court's own declaration that to force the
states to defend themselves against these lawsuits would
deny them "the dignity that is consistent with their
status
as sovereign entities."
This interpretation of the 11th Amendment is wildly
inconsistent with its plain language, which bars only
lawsuits against states brought by "citizens of
another
state, or by citizens or subjects of any foreign
state."
But conservatives on the Supreme Court, who insist in
other
contexts that they are "strict constructionists,"
have held
that the amendment also limits suits brought by a state's
own citizens. Even John Noonan Jr., a conservative
federal
appeals court judge appointed by President Ronald Reagan,
has called the link between the 11th Amendment and state
immunity "imaginary" - and dangerous.
As off base as the Supreme Court's states' rights rulings
have been, they have prompted little popular outrage. The
doctrines are too obscure for most people to follow, and
"respect the power of Congress" is not much of
a rallying
cry. But these decisions have deprived Americans of
important protections, like the Violence Against Women
Act
and the Gun-Free School Zones Act. And they have made it
easier to discriminate against older workers, blind
people
and cancer victims.
The 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education is
this
year. In Brown, the Southern states argued that whatever
anyone thought about segregated schools, the federal
government did not have the power to order them to
integrate. The Supreme Court unanimously disagreed,
holding
that blacks had the right not to be discriminated against
by virtue of their national citizenship.
Now, the court should do the same thing for the disabled.
puts it in his brief, "a second class of citizens
who lack
the full and equal opportunity to participate in civic
life." But the court should make clear that as
Americans,
if not as Tennesseans, people like
Jones and Ralph Ramsey have the right of full entry into
the halls of justice - and first-class citizenship.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/11/opinion/11SUN3.html
# # #
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