The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday ruled against a firefighter who retired early because of Parkinson’s disease and alleged the city of Sanford violated the Americans with Disabilities Act by limiting a health-insurance subsidy.
Justices upheld a decision by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in the lawsuit filed by Karyn Stanley, a fire-department lieutenant who retired in 2018 at age 47 because of the effects of the disease.
The dispute stemmed from Stanley losing a health-insurance subsidy two years after she retired and involved questions about whether the city violated part of the Americans with Disabilities Act aimed at preventing discrimination in employment.
Friday’s main opinion, written by Justice Neil Gorsuch, focused heavily on wording in the law that bars discrimination against a “qualified individual on the basis of disability.” The opinion said the definition of a “qualified individual” in what is known as Title I of the law applied only to current employees or people seeking jobs.
Gorsuch wrote that the law “protects people, not benefits, from discrimination. And the statute also tells us who those people are: qualified individuals, those who hold or seek a job at the time of the defendant’s alleged discrimination.”
But Justice Kentanji Brown Jackson wrote a blistering dissent, arguing the law “says nothing — zero — about the preemployment or postemployment timing of an act of disability discrimination.”
“Disabled Americans who have retired from the workforce simply want to enjoy the fruits of their labor free from discrimination,” she wrote. “Congress plainly protected their right to do so when it crafted Title I. Yet, the Court ignores that right today.”
A civil servant demanding better post-retirement health benefits
Stanley began working as a firefighter for the city in 1999 but was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2016.
When Stanley was hired in 1999, the city provided health-insurance subsidies up to age 65 for firefighters who retired after 25 years of service or who retired because of disabilities, according to court documents. The city changed the policy in 2003 to scale back the benefit to two years for employees who retired early because of disabilities.
As a result, Stanley received the subsidy for two years after she retired, rather than up to age 65. A brief filed in the case said the end of the subsidy resulted in Stanley facing an additional $1,000 a month in health-insurance costs.
Stanley challenged the city in court, but a U.S. district judge dismissed the Americans with Disabilities Act claim. A panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that decision, saying Stanley, as a former employee, could not sue under Title I of the law.
The Biden administration and organizations such as the AFL-CIO, the International Association of Fire Fighters and AARP filed briefs at the Supreme Court backing Stanley. Meanwhile, groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Counties and the National League of Cities supported Sanford in briefs.
Gorsuch was joined Friday in parts of his opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. He was joined in another part by Alito, Kagan and Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
Sotomayor joined part of Jackson’s dissent.
