When the ADA passed in 1990, Beverly Jones expressed her elation: “For me, the passage of the ADA was like opening a door that had been closed to me for so long.” The measure promised to protect people with disabilities from discrimination by private employers, public agencies, and state and local governments. This civil rights act providing equal access and opportunity followed in a long tradition of Americans fighting for their rights, struggles not only to enact laws but also to see them enforced.

Jones, a single mother with two children, joined the ranks of the 2.2 million Americans who use a wheelchair after she was in an automobile accident in 1984 that resulted in paraplegia. Determined not to “allow what I wanted in life to be denied because of . . . physical limitations,” she trained as a court reporter and went to work to support her family. But Jones discovered that despite the requirements of the ADA, in Tennessee seven out of ten courthouses were not wheelchair accessible. “I was often forced to ask complete strangers to carry me up the stairs,” Jones recalled, and she found the experiences “humiliating and frightening.”

Jones pleaded in vain with local, state, and federal officials to obtain compliance with the law. “The door that I thought had been opened was still closed and my freedom to live my dream was turning into a nightmare,” she said. Finally, in 1998, after having to ask a judge to carry her to a restroom, she decided to appeal to the courts.

Jones filed a lawsuit against the state of Tennessee, joining five other plaintiffs who alleged that the state was in violation of Title II of the ADA, which prohibits governmental entities from denying public services, programs, and activities to individuals because of a disability. Another plaintiff, George Lane, had injured his hip and pelvis in a car accident. Cited for reckless driving, he went to the courthouse in a wheelchair but had to crawl up the stairs. When the court adjourned for lunch, he crawled back down. That afternoon, he refused to crawl upstairs again and was jailed for failing to appear in court. Lane said that he would never forget the humiliation of having to drag his body up the thirty tile steps of the Polk County Courthouse. Lane, Jones, and the four other plaintiffs sought legal redress and damages of $250,000 each.

Tennessee immediately countersued, challenging the constitutionality of the ADA’s requirement that states make public facilities accessible to people with disabilities. Finally, in 2004, the case of Tennessee v. Lane reached the Supreme Court, where conservative justices espoused a “new federalism” that challenged the right of Congress to tell the states what to do. Citing sovereign immunity (protection from lawsuits), granted to states by the Eleventh Amendment to the Constitution, courts began to question the right of Congress to make federal laws binding on the states. In 2001, in a dramatic example of the trend to limit Congress’s power, the Supreme Court held that Congress lacked a constitutional basis for permitting states to be sued under Title I of the ADA, which applies to state employment.

In Tennessee v. Lane, the state cited this decision, claiming sovereign immunity and challenging the constitutionality of the ADA. Carol Westlake, executive director of the Tennessee Disability Coalition, pointed out that Tennessee’s claim of states’ rights was the same argument used to deny civil rights to African Americans in the 1950s and 1960s. In January 2004, as the Supreme Court heard arguments in the case, activists demonstrated outside the Court, chanting, “Justice for all; we won’t crawl.”

At stake was not only the right of people with disabilities to sue a state when denied access to public facilities but also the right of Congress to make federal laws binding on the states. In May 2004, in a five-to-four decision, the Supreme Court ruled that states failing to make their courthouses accessible to people with disabilities could be sued for damages under federal disability law. But it confined its ruling to the specific context presented in the case: access to courts. By the narrowest possible margin, with the crucial fifth vote cast by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, the Court focused on one narrow application of the ADA and upheld it in the face of Tennessee’s claim of constitutional immunity.

“My case is over,” Jones acknowledged. “We have accomplished what we wanted to be achieved.” Nonetheless, the narrow grounds on which the Court decided her case meant that people with disabilities would continue to seek judicial acknowledgment of their rights to opportunity and access.

Questions for Consideration

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Why was disability rights legislation one of the few pieces of reform legislation that passed in the 1990s?