Court rules on state immunity, 2 other issues
on Jan 10, 2006 at 9:53 am
The Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that Congress has validly taken away state governments’ immunity to private damage lawsuits under the federal disability law’s coverage of government services, at least so far as that law does allow such lawsuits at all and a lawsuit clearly claims a constitutional violation. There were no dissents in U.S. v. Georgia (04-1203), and a companion case, Goodman v. Georgia (04-1236).
The Court stressed that the state loses its immunity to such suits when it has engaged in conduct that “actually violates the Fourteenth Amendment.” In this case, Justice Antonin Scalia said in the Court’s main opinion, the Court was accepting the Eleventh Circuit’s ruling that a state prison inmate had in fact claimed violations of the Eighth Amendment’s ban on “cruel and unusual punishment” by the way it treats him and other disabled prisoners. (The Eighth Amendment, originally written to apply to the federal government, has been incorporated into the Fourteenth Amendment, under past Court precedent, and thus applies to state governments.)
Scalia said that, while the Court has divided over the scope of Congress’ power to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment, “no one doubts that Section 5 [of that Amendment] grants Congress the power to ‘enforce the provisions’ of the Amendment by creating private remedies against the states for actual violations of those provisions.” (emphasis in original)
Despite the claims of some Court observers that the majority of the Justices have recently abandoned the “federalism revolution,” Tuesday’s decision — like others that have denied state immunity (Tennessee v. Lane [2004] and Nevada v. Hibbs [2003] — preserved the right to bring private lawsuits against the states only in limited circumstances, such as when they have engaged directly in unconstitutional conduct. Thus, the “revolution” that was the main contribution of the late Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist appears to be continuing and states retain a significant amount of Eleventh Amendment immunity to private lawsuits for violations of federal statutes, as opposed to the Constitution, unless Congress in enacting those statutes had the authority to nullify immunity and did so explicitly.
Individuals who are disabled are not explicitly protected against discrimination by the Constitution, because the Court has ruled that disability itself is not the kind of condition insulated from government misconduct. The Court has indicated that, in some situations, the guarantee of equal legal protection does provide some shield against disability discrimination, but not under an independent right of the disabled. Thus, they have more chance of succeeding if they sue under some law — such as the federal Americans with Disabilities Act — that forbids discrimination against them. When they sue a state under such a law, Tuesday’s decision makes clear — as did Tennessee v. Lane and Nevada v. Hibbs — that states have been stripped of immunity most clearly when a federal law enforces a constitutional right. In Lane, it was primarily the right of access to the courts. In Tuesday’s ruling, the claim was based on the right not to suffer cruel and unusual punishment. (In the Hibbs case, a dispute under the Family and Medical Leave Act, the claim was that a state had engaged in discrimination based on sex, which is a constitutional violation under the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause.)
The Court on Tuesday returned the case of inmate Tony Goodman to lower courts, to allow him to amend and clarify his challenge to prison conditions that he claims violate his rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act’s Title II, which protects the disabled from discrimination in government services provided by states, counties and citties. Once a revised complaint is filed, the Court said, lower courts can then determine, claim by claim, which prison practices do violate ADA’s Title II, whether any such violations also violate the Fourteenth Amendment, and whether, if Title II is violated but the Amendment is not, the state does lose its immunity as to any such claim.
Thus, the Court left open the question of whether states would retain immunity to private lawsuits under ADA’s government services protection if only that provision is violated, and the Fourteenth Amendment is not. Justice Scalia’s opinion contained hints, of only the vaguest kind, that states may very well retain immunity if there is no constitutional violation.
Justice John Paul Stevens, joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, wrote separately. He did so partly to put emphasis on the Court’s apparent decision not to settle whether states retain immunity when only Title II is violated, and not the Constitution. Stevens, who said he and Ginsburg did join the Scalia opinion, also stressed that the ruling should not be understood as limiting prisoners’ lawsuits to situations where the Eighth Amendment (as incorporated into the Fourteenth Amendment) allegedly is violated. The Eighth Amendment, Stevens said, is not the only constitutional right in the prison context that prisoners may assert in private lawsuits against states.
(UPDATE: The Disability Law blog, commenting on the ruling, said that “what’s most important about this case is that the Court made clear, really for the first time, that the ADA is valid remedial Section 5 legislation in any case in which the state conduct that violates the ADA also violates the Constitution. There is no requirement that the plaintiff show a history and pattern of past state constitutional violations in such cases; the fact that the conduct challenged by the plaintiff violated the Constitution is enough. The Court’s decision also made clear that the as-applied analysis in Tennessee v. Lane was not a sport; the constitutionality of any application of the ADA must be determined “on a claim-by claim basis.” [Thanks to Howard Bashman of How Appealing for a link to this post.])
In a second decision, the Court declared that a manufacturer of a product is not liable for price discrimination between its dealers that resell that product unless those dealers compete for the same retail customer’s business. The 7-2 ruling clarified the Robinson-Patman Act in the case of Volvo Trucks v. Reeder-Simco (04-905).
In a third decision, with no dissents, the Court decided that an inmate who waits more than three years between a ruling in a lower state court and an appeal to that state’s supreme court has not pursued his claims with diligence under federal habeas law. The ruling came in the case of Evans v. Chavis (04-721). In the past, the Court has ruled that inmates must not delay too long while they are pursuing state challenges, or they risk being found to have wasted too much time in state court and thus were not eligible to pursue their claims under the filing deadlines for a federal habeas challenge. The Evans decision focused mainly upon uncertainties in California appellate procedure.
These were the opinions the Court released Tuesday. Further rulings are expected on Wednesday.
