Lt. Karyn Stanley served her community as a firefighter for nearly two decades until Parkinson’s disease forced her to retire early. But once she retired, she discovered her employer had changed its benefits plan: “normal” retirees would receive a health insurance subsidy until they turned 65, but “disabled” retirees like Lt. Stanley would only be covered for two years. 

To remedy this blatant disparate treatment, Lt. Stanley sued her employer under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), invoking Title I of the Act which prohibits discrimination “against a qualified individual on the basis of disability” in “compensation” and “other terms, conditions, and privileges of employment,” including “fringe benefits.” But the federal district and U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit rejected her claim, construing Title I as limited to prohibiting discrimination against current—not former—employees. Stanley petitioned the Supreme Court to hear her case and the Court agreed to do so. 

CAC filed an amicus brief in support of Stanley in the Supreme Court explaining that the Eleventh Circuit’s decision is at odds with the text and history of the ADA. Our brief makes five points. 

First, retirement benefits distributed post-employment are subject to Title I’s protection against discrimination in “employee compensation” and the “terms, conditions, and privileges of employment.” Congress provided examples of actionable discrimination that, by their terms, plainly apply to discrimination with respect to post-employment retirement benefits, and the Supreme Court has repeatedly stated that the term “fringe benefits” includes post-employment benefits.  

Second, discrimination with respect to fringe benefits is actionable even if it occurs after the period of active employment has ended. Title I’s definition of unlawful “discrimination” provides no limit on when the discrimination must occur to be actionable under the ADA. At the same time, Title I’s enforcement provision specifically incorporates the powers, remedies, and procedures of Title VII, which reach discrimination whenever it occurs.  

Third, the Eleventh Circuit erred by construing the definition of “qualified individual” in Title I as imposing a substantive limit on when actionable discrimination must occur. The court held that because Title I defines a “qualified individual” as “an individual who, with or without reasonable accommodation, can perform the essential functions of the employment position that such individual holds or desires,” and a retiree does not “hold or desire” a position with her former employer, a retiree can never be a “qualified individual” who experiences actionable discrimination under the ADA.  

But as we explain, the court below fundamentally misunderstood the role of the definition of the term “qualified individual” in Title I’s statutory scheme. That definition makes clear that if an individual “holds or desires” an employment position, he or she must be able to perform the “essential functions” of that position, with or without a reasonable accommodation. The verbs “holds” and “desires” are written in the present tense because they refer to the time when a person must be capable of “performing the essential functions of the employment position,” not the time when actionable discrimination must occur. 

Fourth, the decision below undermines Congress’s avowed effort to create a comprehensive remedy for employment discrimination on the basis of disability. The testimony leading up to the passage of the ADA repeatedly emphasized that workers with disabilities faced discrimination involving the “benefits for their health and retirement.” And Congress’s secondary interest in reducing dependence on government services by people with disabilities, including during the post-employment period, is at odds with the interpretation of Title I espoused by the Eleventh Circuit.  

Fifth, and finally, Title I of the ADA was modeled on Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. Interpreting the former but not the latter to bar suit by former employees would cause anomalous results. Lawmakers repeatedly made clear that they sought to provide protections under the ADA that were “identical” to the civil rights protections available under Title VII, which cover former employees. But now, in the Eleventh Circuit, if two retirees experience the exact same discrimination—with the exception that one individual’s employer unlawfully distinguishes on the basis of sex, while the other does so on the basis of disability—their cases may result in different outcomes. That would directly subvert Congress’s plan for the statute.