http://www.jfanow.org/cgi/getli.pl?1902
"NYT Editorial on Lane v. Tennessee"
>From the New York Times:
January 11, 2004
EDITORIAL OBSERVER
Can Disabled People Be Forced to Crawl Up the Courthouse
Steps?
By ADAM COHEN
BENTON, Tenn.--When George Lane showed up at the Polk
County Courthouse with a crushed hip and pelvis, he had a
problem. His hearing was on the second floor, there was no
elevator, and the judge said he had better get upstairs.
Mr. Lane, both of whose legs were in casts, somehow managed
to get out of his wheelchair and crawl up two flights of
stairs. "On a pain scale of 1 to 10, it was way past 10,"
he says.
While Mr. Lane crawled up, he says, the judge and other
courthouse employees "stood at the top of the stairs and
laughed at me." His case was not heard in the morning
session, he says, and at the lunch break he crawled back
down. That afternoon, when he refused to crawl upstairs
again, he was arrested for failing to appear, and put in
jail.
Anyone looking for evidence that a mean mood has descended
on the nation need only stop by the Supreme Court Tuesday
for the arguments in Tennessee v. Lane. Mr. Lane and other
disabled people are suing Tennessee under the Americans
With Disabilities Act for failing to make its courthouses
accessible. Tennessee, backed by a group of other states,
is belittling the claims, and insisting it has immunity to
the suit.
Incredibly, there is a real chance the Supreme Court will
side with Tennessee. The court's conservative majority has
been on a misguided "federalism" campaign, denying
Congress's power to protect the environment, combat gun
violence and ban discrimination. It has justified these
rulings by saying it has to protect the "dignity" of the
states. The discrimination in Mr. Lane's case is so
horrific, however, it may help the court to grasp the
possible consequences of that stand - including its effect
on the dignity of people like Mr. Lane.
George Lane was working two jobs when he got into the car
accident that led to his court appearance. Mr. Lane, who
had had minor run-ins with the law before, was not popular
with the courthouse crowd in his rural Tennessee county.
The employees who laughed at him offered to carry him
upstairs, he says, but he was afraid they would
intentionally drop him. (The judge who presided that day is
no longer alive; the court clerk says she was not present.)
A second plaintiff, Beverly Jones, supports her two
children by working as a court reporter. Ms. Jones, who
uses a wheelchair, has turned down jobs in some of the 23
Tennessee counties without accessible courthouses. Once, in
a court without an accessible bathroom, she says, the judge
had to pick her up and place her on the toilet. Another
time, one of the court employees carrying her upstairs
slipped. By chance she fell into someone else, she says,
but she nearly fell all the way down.
Ralph Ramsey, a third plaintiff, was a defendant in a civil
suit. When he got to court, he sent word to the judge that
his disability prevented him from getting to the second-
floor courtroom. The case went on without him. An opposing
attorney later came down and told Mr. Ramsey, as he passed
by, that his client had just won a $1,500 judgment against
him.
In their briefs, the states show little sympathy for the
disabled plaintiffs. Court reporters like Ms. Jones have no
constitutional right, they say, to "ply their trade" in
accessible courthouses. Nor, they insist, does Mr. Lane
have an absolute right to attend his own criminal trial. As
support, they cite a case in which a defendant was removed
after repeatedly interrupting his trial and threatening to
kill the judge. In any case, the states argue, Tennessee
offered to "assist him upstairs," the offer Mr. Lane
rejected because he feared he would be purposely dropped.
But their main argument is states' rights - that the
federal government has no power to protect the disabled
this way. The states insist the 11th Amendment gives them
immunity from suits for damages under the A.D.A. They cite
the Supreme Court's own declaration that to force the
states to defend themselves against these lawsuits would
deny them "the dignity that is consistent with their status
as sovereign entities."
This interpretation of the 11th Amendment is wildly
inconsistent with its plain language, which bars only
lawsuits against states brought by "citizens of another
state, or by citizens or subjects of any foreign state."
But conservatives on the Supreme Court, who insist in other
contexts that they are "strict constructionists," have held
that the amendment also limits suits brought by a state's
own citizens. Even John Noonan Jr., a conservative federal
appeals court judge appointed by President Ronald Reagan,
has called the link between the 11th Amendment and state
immunity "imaginary" - and dangerous.
As off base as the Supreme Court's states' rights rulings
have been, they have prompted little popular outrage. The
doctrines are too obscure for most people to follow, and
"respect the power of Congress" is not much of a rallying
cry. But these decisions have deprived Americans of
important protections, like the Violence Against Women Act
and the Gun-Free School Zones Act. And they have made it
easier to discriminate against older workers, blind people
and cancer victims.
The 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education is this
year. In Brown, the Southern states argued that whatever
anyone thought about segregated schools, the federal
government did not have the power to order them to
integrate. The Supreme Court unanimously disagreed, holding
that blacks had the right not to be discriminated against
by virtue of their national citizenship.
Now, the court should do the same thing for the disabled.
Tennessee may be willing to turn them into, as Mr. Lane
puts it in his brief, "a second class of citizens who lack
the full and equal opportunity to participate in civic
life." But the court should make clear that as Americans,
if not as Tennesseans, people like George Lane, Beverly
Jones and Ralph Ramsey have the right of full entry into
the halls of justice - and first-class citizenship.
*********************
Words can't possibly express how angry this makes me.
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