Ruling takes comprehensive look at how impairment affects a person's daily life

January's U.S. Supreme Court ruling further limiting how workers are covered by the 1990 Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) is not consistent with what Congress intended, says AFT counsel David Strom. The court ruled Jan. 8 that an automobile assembly plant worker's carpal tunnel syndrome did not qualify her as disabled under the ADA.

Specifically, the court found that the worker's disability did not prevent or severely restrict her from doing activities that were central to her daily life, such as household chores and bathing. Strom says that the court's decision establishes that future disability determinations should be reached on an "individual, case-by-case basis," a position that acknowledges that people suffering, for example, from carpal tunnel "have a broad swath of manifestations."

Strom took issue with the court's narrowing of the law. "If an employee is significantly limited in his or her ability to perform in the workplace, then that is a disability, and the employee should be protected under the ADA," Strom says. "In my opinion, that is what Congress intended."

The decision, he notes, "will curtail the prospects for success for a number of ADA cases--and FPE/AFT union leaders who are making decisions about bringing cases need to be aware of that."

The Supreme Court will be hearing arguments in another ADA-related case this year. At issue is the extent to which an employee's request for reasonable accommodation under the ADA can trump collectively bargained seniority rights for a job.