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July 27, 2020

Beyond the right to live in the world: A reflection on the ADA and disability law

[Cross-posted from the American Constitution Society Expert Forum]

By Jasmine E. Harris

Jacobus tenBroek penned one of the most formative law review articles in disability rights history, “The Right To Live In The World, in 1966, in which he argued, among other things, that law and society should move from a custodial approach to disability regulation that prioritized segregated residences to an integrationist approach that prioritized mainstream community living. The thirtieth anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the civil rights legislation for people with disabilities, underscores the importance of Dr. tenBroek’s legacy as well. His emphasis on integration as the theoretical underpinning of law reform directly influenced key disability rights including Sections 501, 503, and 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Americans with Disabilities Act. The idea that people with disabilities were entitled to equal opportunity in the same ways as other marginalized groups—such as people of color or women—was nothing short of radical at the time of his article. Dr. tenBroek framed equality for people with disabilities as “the right to live in the world” which, by extension, required physical access to make the right meaningful. While the ADA has undoubtedly transformed the built world by removing architectural barriers, legal scholars and advocates agree that the ADA has been less successful in combatting disability discrimination in other priority areas such as employment.

Three decades after President George H.W. Bush signed the ADA, a bi-partisan achievement, the existence of a “right” to live in the world has proven insufficient on its own to guarantee equal opportunities for people with disabilities. Case in point, Covid-19. The current pandemic has underscored what I call the “frailty of disability rights,” the instability of the rights of people with disabilities when they compete with those of other public interests. Two recent examples illustrate how antiquated social norms and attitudes about disability undermine how disability rights are exercised, interpreted, and enforced. First, consider the ease with which states and private actors dusted off healthcare rationing policies that blatantly discriminated on the basis of disability and age, and how easily such policies passed public muster. Alabama’s standards of care, for instance, classified people with intellectual and developmental disabilities as “poor candidates” for ventilators. If not for the swift legal response from disability advocates and a subsequent settlement, these standards of care would continue to inform medical treatment and rationing in Alabama and in other states. Second, consider how owners and operators of places of public accommodations wrestle with a growing anti-mask movement. Some anti-mask activists erroneously have claimed that the Americans with Disabilities Act exempts them from state and local mask requirements because of underlying health conditions. They have also argued that the ADA and privacy laws such as Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act prevent business owners or service providers from asking any follow-up questions about disability. To be clear, there are certainly medical conditions that require business owners to provide reasonable modifications to allow individuals with disabilities to access their services; however, the analysis is not categorical. Such assessment would require an individualized examination of whether the person meets a threshold legal definition of disability, and follow explicit procedures enumerated in the ADA and corresponding regulations.

At least three factors continue to limit the remedial reach of disability laws. First, what I have called “the aesthetics of disability”—socially determined physical, sensory, and behavioral markers of disability—trigger affective processes that mitigate interactions with people with disabilities. The degree to which a person claiming disability manifests these limited aesthetic markers—usually assistive devices such as wheelchairs, white canes, prosthetics, or visible affliction and pain taken as proxies for incapacity—determines the legitimacy of their claim to disability identity and the perceived benefits that accompany such status. From parking lots and amusement parks to the courtroom, the aesthetics of disability have become evidentiary cornerstones of legitimate claims to disability. Consider the evidentiary role of Harvey Weinstein’s walker in his sexual assault trial in New York. Also, while upwards of 61 million people in the United States have one or more disabilities, only a small percentage of this number visibly manifest the aesthetics of disability. This can affect whether a person without them wishes to exercise legal rights and entitlements, in part, because these markers influence how factfinders will judge the persuasiveness of their claim to disability.

Second, and relatedly, disability laws have a complicated relationship with privacy. Congress intended the ADA to help address attitudinal barriers that limit access for people with disabilities which requires wrestling with deeply rooted biases against people with disabilities. The actual design of the ADA protects the employee from involuntary disclosures of disability information, including their identity as a person with a disability, in the employment context; however, if the employee voluntarily discloses to others in the workplace, they may lose the broader privacy protections. This means that an employee with a less visible disability, to protect their privacy rights overall, may choose not to disclose disability even when disclosure could benefit both the individual through the accommodations process and the broader normative mission of the ADA. This is part of the reason some anti-mask activists claiming disability exemptions have been so successful. Because people do not understand the nuances and realities of disability, they may be more inclined to be risk-averse without further inquiry when someone presents the possibility of ADA liability. This, in turn, breeds public mistrust about fraud and gaming that leads to public policing of disability rights. I argue in a forthcoming paper that the assumption that disability laws ought to value privacy as a default antidiscrimination tool requires interrogation, in part, because of the negative externalities it has produced—e.g., information deficits about disability, stigma, and the perpetuation of the aesthetics of disability in law. This is not to say that we should deregulate the disclosure of medical information or force people with less visible disabilities to disclose disability identity in service of meta-antidiscrimination goals; rather, in the design of legislation and regulation of disability, we must actively debate the stakes of nudging privacy over publicity.

Third, the ADA’s statutory focus on individual remedies over structural reforms has constrained its impact. The precarious balance between individual rights and systemic change is not unique to disability law. Perhaps, as Professor Jamal Greene argues in his forthcoming book, How Rights Went Wrong, the problem is the rights framework itself that sets up a zero-sum game (perceived or real) and breeds social discontent. This global explanation is certainly plausible and applicable to disability, but I would argue that disability law takes individualization a step further. The ADA emphasizes individual assessment to avoid categorical generalizations that treat all people with disabilities as incapable, frail, and pitiable. Key ADA legal tools such as reasonable accommodations and even the “direct threat” defense demand an individualized analysis to ensure that people with disabilities have access to work, places of public accommodations, and public programs and services. Congress focused on individualization because of the pervasiveness of stereotypes about particular disabilities, some that may be highly stigmatized such as HIV/AIDS or, perhaps, Covid-19.

How do we address the deficiencies of the ADA in creating a right to live in the world? To begin to answer this question, I return to Dr. Jacobus tenBroek. Dr. tenBroek was intimately tied to the civil rights movement for racial justice. Thurgood Marshall, at the time special counsel for the NAACP rearguing Brown v. Board of Educationwrote to Dr. tenBroek to discuss tenBroek’s abolitionist theories of constitutional interpretation of Section One of the Fourteenth Amendment. Dr. tenBroek’s work viewed segregation as antithetical to the constitutional guarantees of equal protection. This is the connection between his disability related work and his constitutional abolitionist work. Justice Thurgood Marshall would later go on to dissent in City of Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Center, Inc., reasoning, in part, that people with intellectual and developmental disabilities are a discrete, insular class of people who have been subjected to extraordinary discrimination, segregation, and neglect like other marginalized groups. This recognition of interdependence, historic subordination, and shared vulnerability is the future of disability justice in the United States. The coexistence of Covid-19 and Black Lives Matter in the public mind has created space to connect the dots.  From policing to Covid-19’s effect on prisons and nursing homes, people of color, are disproportionately affected. Yet modern disability rights movements have not yet fully grappled with internal racism and the potential for an antiracist and anti-ableist approach to social justice.

But what is the proper role of law in this? It is complicated and not my intent to resolve these issues here. However, public discourse around abolition versus reform offers an interesting entry point that resonates with disability advocates. Take prison abolition. The demise of large-scale, congregate residential institutions that served people with intellectual and developmental disabilities in the 1970s, for example, may offer insights into the broader decarceration movement. In many ways, modern abolitionists advance universal design thinking, that is, rather than retain a deeply flawed institution and make tweaks to accommodate individuals in this system, we ought to rethink the entire system, critique its goals, and address the socio-political and economic inequities that lead to incarceration in the first place. This could include revisiting the importance of constitutional law (both state and federal) to the advancement of disability equality. This moment feels different. Everyone is reimagining how and why institutions exist and operate as they do. Integration remains a critical governing principle in disability law, now more than ever. Dr. tenBroek’s legacy, however, demands that we move beyond the mere right to live in the world and ask not what we need to live in this world but what kind of world we want to live in.

July 27, 2020

We should applaud the changes to the California bar

By Kevin R. Johnson

[Cross-posted from Daily Journal]

The global pandemic has changed all our lives. And it made the July 2020 administration of the California bar exam – in large venues filled to capacity across the state – a public health impossibility.

After several months of emergency deliberations, uncertainty for recent law graduates, and advocacy by bar applicants, law deans and others, the California Supreme Court announced a reasonable, responsible and creative testing alternative. Read more …

 

July 10, 2020

Down with Confederate monuments, 'up with the stars'

[Cross-posted from The Hill]

By Alan E. Brownstein

During the national debate about American symbols and monuments, Donald Trump makes two claims: He argues it is an affront to our heritage to take down Confederate monuments and rename military bases honoring Confederate generals, and he also demands that everyone — including athletes and others protesting racial injustice in our society — must act in ways that are properly respectful of our flag.

The first argument makes little sense. The second is starkly inconsistent with the first.

Monuments memorialize individuals and events that deserve to be honored. They do more than describe the past. They assign value to it. To put it simply, all individuals who played a role in American history, every event of any magnitude, is part of American history. But it is absurd to suggest that all such aspects of our heritage deserve to be honored with monuments.

During the American Revolution, 15 percent to 20 percent of the colonists were loyalists who maintained their allegiance to the British Crown. They supported British forces. Thousands took up arms against the patriots fighting for our independence. These loyalists are part of our heritage. Should we memorialize and erect monuments to them?

During the early 1900s, millions of Americans were members of the Ku Klux Klan. They are part of our heritage too. Should we erect monuments to Klan leaders as well?

Playing a part in American history, standing alone, doesn’t justify erecting monuments to people or naming military bases after them. To deserve this kind of recognition, historical figures have to have done and stood for things worthy of our admiration over time. What did the leaders and generals fighting for the Confederacy do? What did they stand for?

First, they fought to dehumanize and enslave an entire race of people. That cause deserves our contempt. It should receive no badge of honor.

Second, they took up arms against our flag. If Donald Trump demands respect for and allegiance to the American flag, why in the world does he insist on protecting monuments to, and honors for, those who disgraced it?

Trump’s apparent commitment to the flag is so great that he wants flag burning criminalized. The Supreme Court held in Texas v. Johnson in 1986 that it violates the First Amendment to punish protestors who burn the American flag as symbolic speech. This was a 5-4 decision emotionally argued by the justices on both sides.

Then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote a particularly passionate dissent. In it, he quoted in its entirety a poem titled “Barbara Frietchie” by John Greenleaf Whittier. Supreme Court justices do not typically recite poetry, much less entire poems, in their opinions. But Texas v. Johnson was a special case because the flag is a special symbol. The poem recounts an allegedly true story of how during the Civil War a Confederate army invaded the northern town of Frederick, Md. Seeing the American flag flying from the attic of Barbara Frietchie’s home, the rebel troops stopped and fired on it, and “rent the banner with seam and gash.” The elderly woman, Barbara Frietchie, took up the flag before it could fall and dared the soldiers below to shoot her, but to spare the flag.

Most law school case books do not include this poem when they publish the highly edited text of Texas v. Johnson. But for the many years I taught the First Amendment as a constitutional law professor, I always read the entire poem to my classes. I wanted my students to know not only the doctrine, but also the passion stirred by this case, and by the American flag.

I doubt Donald Trump has read either the Texas v. Johnson case or Whittier’s poem. If he did, he might think for a moment about who it was that fired on the American flag and “rent the banner with seam and gash.” It wasn’t Black athletes kneeling during the national anthem, calling for our country to live up to the ideals represented by our flag. It was the Confederates whom Trump wants to honor with monuments and the naming of military bases.

And this is the key point: If you demand respect for the flag, you cannot at the same time honor the Confederate leaders and generals who turned traitor against it. The flag was on only one side in the Civil War. It flew in the ranks of the Union troops under assault by Confederate rebels.

Loyal Americans rallied to the colors. In a popular song of the time, they marched to war singing:

Yes, We’ll rally round the flag, boys, rally once again,
Shouting the battle cry of freedom.
We will rally from the hillside, gather from the plain.
Shouting the battle cry of freedom.

The Union forever, hurrah boys, hurrah!
Down with the traitors and up with the stars;
While we rally round the flag, boys, rally once again
Shouting the battle cry of freedom.

We are springing to the call of our brothers gone before
Shouting the battle cry of freedom
And we'll fill the vacant ranks with a million free men more
Shouting the battle cry of freedom.

The Union forever, hurrah boys, hurrah!
Down with the traitors and up with the stars;
While we rally round the flag, boys, rally once again
Shouting the battle cry of freedom.

We will welcome to our numbers, the loyal, true and brave,
Shouting the battle cry of freedom,
And although they may be poor, not a man shall be a slave,
Shouting the battle cry of freedom.

The Union forever, hurrah boys, hurrah!
Down with the traitors and up with the stars;
While we rally round the flag, boys, rally once again
Shouting the battle cry of freedom.

For those who respect both our flag and our history, the issue of taking down monuments to Confederate leaders and generals and renaming military bases honoring them should be an easy one.

As Americans we should rally round the flag, shouting the battle cry of freedom.

Down with the traitors and up with the stars.

That means taking down the monuments and renaming the bases.

Down with the traitors and up with the stars.

July 6, 2020

Debt relief is now harder for students of for-profit colleges

[Cross-posted from The Hill]

By John Patrick Hunt

For-profit colleges are accused of deceiving students across the nation and leaving them with a legacy of student debt. Predatory schools allegedly targeted veterans for their GI benefits and also set their sights on lower-income communities and communities of color.

Now, new, controversial rules will make it more difficult for deceived student borrowers to get relief from their loans. The rules went into effect July 1, after President Trump — ignoring veterans and consumer groups — vetoed a resolution that would have stopped them.

More than 300,000 student borrowers have applied to the Department of Education for loan relief. based on school misconduct. The collapse of large chains of for-profit schools such as Corinthian CollegesITT, and the Art Institutes have highlighted allegations of false job placement statistics, misleading accreditation claims, deceptive claims about financial aid, and costs of attendance, and more.

After years of wrangling, in late 2018 a court ordered into effect rules the Obama administration had drafted to help deceived borrowers. But by that time, the department, now led by Secretary Betsy DeVos, was far along in drafting new rules. 

The DeVos rules make it harder for borrowers to get relief in many ways. One critical change is that the department can no longer handle similar claims in batches, for example providing relief to everyone who entered a program after the school lied about employment statistics. Now each individual borrower is on their own.

Moreover, those individual borrowers now must prove that the school made misrepresentation with the knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard for the truth. An individual borrower usually will not be able to prove a school’s state of mind — the rules do not say how borrowers can get evidence on the point — so opponents of the new rules have aptly described them as imposing a “near-impossible” standard of proof. 

Although a pending lawsuit challenges the rules, its prospects are uncertain. With the Education Department abdicating its responsibility to protect student borrowers from fraud and deception, it is time to think about consumer bankruptcy as another avenue for relief. 

Despite a perception that it is impossible to escape student loans in bankruptcy, studies have found that 40-60 percent of borrowers who actually seek to do so enjoy at least some success. The main obstacle for the other 40-60 percent is the requirement, unique to student loans, that the borrower show “undue hardship” to get a discharge.

In evaluating undue hardship, courts typically look to factors such as the debtor’s age, health, and family responsibilities, as well as the repayment efforts the debtor has already made. By contrast, courts almost never consider whether the borrower was tricked into taking out the loan in the first place.

It is not entirely clear why this is so. Perhaps it is because courts developed their tests for undue hardship before enrollment at for-profit schools took off. For-profits reportedly have accounted for over 98 percent of higher education fraud complaints.

It is now time for a change. Bankruptcy courts should start to consider whether the school deceived the borrower into enrolling. Dictionaries tell us that the word “undue” means unjustifiably great. As between two borrowers, each of whom will suffer equally in trying to repay student loans, the one who was deceived has a stronger claim that hardship is “undue.”

The federal government makes most student loans, and it might be argued that the government is not responsible for schools’ misconduct. But since 1976, private consumer lenders have been responsible for sellers’ deception if the seller refers the buyer to the lender. Schools do more than “refer” students to federal student loans; they run the entire process of originating the loans under the department’s supervision.

Chapter 7 bankruptcy can affect credit scores, cause social stigma, and require the sale of the debtor’s property. It will not be an attractive option for all victimized borrowers.

However, many deceived borrowers must be in such financial distress that bankruptcy makes sense. Courts can apply bankruptcy law to offer a greater chance of relief than the DeVos rules do. And most importantly, bankruptcy courts can provide relief even if the political process in Washington, D.C is stalled.

Student loans are a source of rising anger and frustration, and loans arising from fraud are among the most infuriating. Bankruptcy courts must step in to help where the education department has failed.

July 1, 2020

Stopping the Trump administration from stopping gender-based asylum claims

[Cross-posted from ImmigrationProf Blog]

By Brian Soucek

The comment period is now halfway done for the Trump Administration’s new Proposed Rule Dismantling the Asylum System (not its official title). As I said in a comment submitted on June 29, the “the Proposed Rule is misguided and legally infirm in almost too many ways to count,” but I decided to focus just on one thing: its attempt to end gender-based asylum claims.

The Rule proposes a change to the nexus standard: the part of refugee law that says what it means for persecution to be “on account of” one of the five protected grounds—race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. The Rule would add regulatory language, under the heading “Nexus,” saying that the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security, “in general, will not favorably adjudicate the claims of aliens who claim persecution based on … gender.”

There are at least six things wrong with this. The full comment spends 12 pages detailing them, but here’s a summary:

1.   The Rule confuses nexus analysis, which is about the reasons behind persecution, with membership in a particular social group, which requires adjudicators to determine whether particular groups (like women in a given country) should be recognized for asylum purposes. A general nexus bar would require evidence that women, for example, are not generally persecuted because of their gender. The Rule makes no such showing.

2.   The Rule doesn’t understand why courts require case-by-case judgments about what groups to recognize. In the olden days, when groups were judged based only on the immutability of their shared traits, categorical answers could be given about whether, say, “homosexuals in Cuba” should be recognized. Not anymore. The new test, which requires “social distinction” and “particularity” in addition to “immutability,” is now inherently fact-bound, and results can vary by time and place. The Departments don’t seem to recognize this important change, brought about by their own case law.

3.   Amazingly, the Rule offers one single citation for its sweeping exclusion of gender-based claims: a Tenth Circuit opinion from 2005, which has language suggesting that gender-based social groups might be too big to qualify for asylum. But—get this—the one case cited ultimately reaches the exact opposite conclusion! Using a citation this misleadingly in court would clearly be sanctionable. Here it just leaves the proposed gender bar utterly devoid of support.

4.   The Rule isn’t just wrong about the Tenth Circuit, it’s wrong on the merits: size doesn’t matter to whether a particular social group (like women) qualifies for asylum. Allowing gender-based claims is no more of a slippery slope than allowing claims based on race and national origin, which the statute requires. Since the five grounds are supposed to be interpreted in tandem, it would be unreasonable to impose a size limit on social groups that isn’t imposed on, say, religious, political, or racial groups.

5.   The bar on gender-based claims is clearly an attempt to thwart claims by women who have been abused by their partners, and to do so even more effectively, the Rule adds a new bar on “evidence promoting cultural stereotypes about an individual or a country.” But the bar only applies to evidence from asylum seekers, not the government! The Rule offers one example of stereotyping: evidence suggesting that “Guatemala has a culture of machismo and family violence.” It’s hard to know how applicants can show evidence of widespread and systemic harms in a country—the kind of pattern-or-practice evidence that even this Rule still allows—without having it rejected for promoting stereotypes. Regardless, the one-sided application of this evidentiary bar likely violates the Due Process Clause.

6.   Finally, the Proposed Rule was published on the same day as the Supreme Court’s historic LGBTQ-rights decision in Bostock v. Clayton County. Bostock makes clear that discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity is necessarily discrimination based on sex. That’s great news for LGBTQ employees, but bad news for LGBTQ refugees, at least if this Rule goes into effect. For substitute “persecution” for “discrimination,” and under the logic of Bostock, a general bar on gender-based persecution claims must generally also exclude claims from people persecuted for their sexual orientation or gender identity—despite the fact that U.S. asylum law has recognized LGBTQ claims for decades. The Trump Administration hasn’t acknowledged this implication of its Rule, much less made any attempt to justify such a dramatic change to asylum law.

There are overwhelming humanitarian and political reasons for not ending our protection of refugees who flee gender violence. But there are also at least six legal reasons why the Trump Administration’s attempt to exclude these refugees should be doomed to fail. For more on any of these reasons, you can read my full comment here. And there are still two weeks left to submit your own comment on the Rule here!