|
 New
York Times Editorial: Lane v. Tennessee
Can Disabled People Be Forced to Crawl Up the Courthouse
Steps?
by Adam Cohen, January 11, 2004, New York Times;
Distributed via email by Justice For all
For more articles like this
visit
https://www.bridges4kids.org.
Benton,
Tennessee: When George Lane showed up at the Polk County
Courthouse with a crushed hip and pelvis, he had a problem. His
hearing was on the second floor, there was no elevator, and the
judge said he had better get upstairs. Mr. Lane, both of whose
legs were in casts, somehow managed 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 Mr. Lane crawled up, he says, the judge and other
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 Tennessee v. Lane. Mr. Lane and other disabled
people are suing Tennessee under the Americans With Disabilities
Act for failing to make its courthouses accessible. Tennessee,
backed by a group of other states, is belittling the claims, and
insisting it has immunity to the suit.
Incredibly, there is a real chance the Supreme Court will side
with Tennessee. The court's conservative majority has 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
Mr. Lane's case is so horrific, however, it may help the court
to grasp the possible consequences of that stand - including its
effect on the dignity of people like Mr. Lane.
George Lane was working two jobs when he got into the car
accident that led to his court appearance. Mr. Lane, who had had
minor run-ins with the law before, was not popular with the
courthouse crowd in his rural Tennessee county. 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 Tennessee counties
without accessible courthouses. Once, in 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 Mr. Lane 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, Tennessee offered to
"assist him upstairs," the offer Mr. Lane 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.
Tennessee may be willing to turn them into, as Mr. Lane 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 George Lane, Beverly Jones and Ralph Ramsey have the
right of full entry into the halls of justice - and first-class
citizenship.
There's
strength in numbers! Be a part of a national coalition of people
with disabilities and join AAPD today.
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