3d Cir. Upholds ADA in Public Education
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The Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit agreed with three other courts of appeals that Congressional abrogation of sovereign immunity in Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was valid with respect to public education. The case had a most tortured history, and much of the decision focuses on the sanctions that were issued by the district court against the plaintiff and her attorneys for failing to disclose records of the student’s drug abuse problem. Nevertheless, the case does clarify that the relevant date for Title II inquiry is the date at which the discrimination allegedly occurred, not the date of the filing of suit, and the decision is significant for holding that Congress was within the scope of its powers under section 5 of the 14th Amendment in passing Title II of the ADA as applied to public education. Bowers v. National Collegiate Athletic Ass’n, 2007 WL 270098 (3d Cir. Feb. 1, 2007).
The case concerns a student with learning disabilities who was a star high school football player. He was in the process of being recruited by many universities, including the University of Iowa, until he was designated as a nonqualifier by the NCAA due to his taking special education classes and an untimed SAT exam. Because he was designated as a nonqualifier, he was not able to play Division I or II football in college. To make a long story short, he subsequently developed a drug problem and eventually died from an overdose. His mother assumed the role of plaintiff after his death. The University of Iowa is one of the defendants.
The district court not only sanctioned the mother and her attorneys for failure to supply discovery information regarding her son’s drug abuse, but further concluded that the defendants were entitled to summary judgment because the drug abuse precluded the son’s participation in intercollegiate athletics at all relevant times. The appellate court reversed. The Court of Appeals noted that the evidence showed that the son developed a drug problem after he was found to be unqualified and after the schools stopped recruiting him. The appellate court agreed with the district court’s decision that the mother should be precluded from using information about the drug problem to her advantage, since she did not timely disclose the information to defendants. Yet the appellate court reversed the district court’s sanction of precluding her from introducing evidence of the son’s depression, since she had revealed this information in discovery in a timely manner. The appellate court also reversed the finding of sanctions against the attorneys, holding that the district court violated the procedural due process rights of attorneys by giving the attorneys no notice (until the issuance of the decision) that the court was even contemplating entering sanctions directly against the attorneys.
The University of Iowa argued that it was entitled to Eleventh Amendment immunity from suit under Title II. (The Third Circuit had previously held that a state program that accepts federal funds waives its Eleventh Amendment immunity to Rehabilitation Act claims. Koslow v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, 302 F.3d 161 (3d Cir. 2002). Therefore, the University of Iowa was not immune from suit under the Rehabilitation Act under prior Third Circuit precedent.) The Court of Appeals first evaluated the ties between the University of Iowa and the state of Iowa and concluded that the University is an arm of the state, entitled to Eleventh Amendment immunity with regard to state law tort claims.
However, the circuit court held that Congress validly abrogated Eleventh Amendment immunity under Title II of the ADA. The court cited the Supreme Court decision in Tennessee v. Lane, 541 U.S. 509 (2004), for the holding that Title II was valid legislation under section 5 of the 14th Amendment as applied to access to judicial services. The Supreme Court established in City of Boerne v. Flores, 521 U.S. 507 (1997) that section 5 legislation is valid if it exhibits “a congruence and proportionality between the injury to be prevented or remedied and the means adopted to that end.”
The Third Circuit held that the University’s refusal to offer the student a scholarship on the basis that he was not eligible under NCAA standards amounted to exclusion from a program at a public education institution because of his learning disability. The court held that this exclusion did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment, because it passed a rational basis test. Still, the exclusion from participation based on a disability would violate Title II. Therefore, the court reviewed whether the abrogation of state sovereign immunity in Title II was congruent and proportional with respect to public education. The US Department of Justice had submitted a brief in favor of a finding that Title II was valid as applied to public education. The Third Circuit quoted the DOJ brief and stated: “We agree with the United States that ‘[a]s applied to education, Title II is a congruent and proportional means of preventing and remedying the unconstitutional discrimination that Congress found to exist both in education and in other areas of governmental services, many of which implicate fundamental rights.’” The court continued to cite the government’s brief in finding that “Congress enacted Title II against the backdrop of our regrettable national history in educating students with disabilities.” The court cited three cases from other courts of appeals also holding that Congressional abrogation of sovereign immunity with respect to public education was valid. Toledo v. Sanchez, 454 F.3d 24 (1st Cir. 2006); Constantine v. Rectors and Visitors of George Mason, 411 F.3d 474 (4th Cir. 2005); Assoc. for Disabled Americans, Inc. v. Florida Int’l Univ., 405 F.3d 954 (11th Cir. 2005).