Law Commons^™

Employers And The Privatization Of Public Health, Sharona Hoffman

Faculty Publications

This Article focuses on the role of employers in public health and argues that they constitute increasingly important actors in the U.S. public health arena. In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, a series of judicial decisions and newly enacted statutes enfeebled the public health powers of the federal and state governments. In a 2023 statement, Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch clearly articulated his antagonism towards government-initiated COVID-19 interventions, describing them as “the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country.” All too many share his views.

Employers may be highly motivated to safeguard their workers’ …

What Genetic Testing Teaches About Long-Term Predictive Health Analytics Regulation, Sharona Hoffman

Faculty Publications

The ever-growing phenomenon of predictive health analytics is generating significant excitement, hope for improved health outcomes, and potential for new revenues. Researchers are developing algorithms to predict suicide, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, cognitive decline, future opioid abuse, and other ailments. The researchers include not only medical experts, but also commercial enterprises such as Facebook and LexisNexis, who may profit from the work considerably. This Article focuses on long-term disease predictions (predictions regarding future illnesses), which have received surprisingly little attention in the legal and ethical literature. It compares the robust academic and policy debates and legal interventions that followed the …

Big Data And The Americans With Disabilities Act: Amending The Law To Cover Discrimination Based On Data-Driven Predictions Of Future Illnesses, Sharona Hoffman

Faculty Publications

While big data holds great promise to improve the human condition, it also creates new and previously unimaginable opportunities for discrimination. Employers, financial institutions, marketers, educational institutions, and others can now easily obtain a wealth of big data about individuals’ health status and use it to make adverse decisions relating to data subjects.

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is a federal law that prohibits employers and other public and private entities from discriminating against individuals because of their disabilities. This chapter argues that in the era of big data, the ADA does not go far enough. While the ADA …

Big Data And The Americans With Disabilities Act, Sharona Hoffman

Faculty Publications

While big data offers society many potential benefits, it also comes with serious risks. This Essay focuses on the concern that big data will lead to increased employment discrimination. It develops the novel argument that the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) should be amended in response to the big data phenomenon in order to protect individuals who are perceived as likely to develop physical or mental impairments in the future. Employers can obtain medical data about employees not only through the traditional means of medical examinations and inquiries, but also through the non-traditional mechanisms of social media, wellness programs, and …

Pleading Disability, Joseph Seiner

Faculty Publications

A significant failure. That is how the Americans with Disabilities Act ("ADA") has been described by legal scholars and disability advocates alike. The statute was widely expected to help prevent disability discrimination in employment, but it has not fully achieved its intended purpose because of the narrow interpretation of the ADA by the courts. Congress recently sought to restore the employment protections of the ADA by amending the statute. Interpreting the complex and comprehensive amendments to the ADA will be a difficult task for the federal courts. Complicating matters further, the proper pleading standard for disability claims was left in …

Settling The Matter: Does Title I Of The Ada Work?, Sharona Hoffman

Faculty Publications

Analysis of cases decided under Title I of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which addresses employment discrimination, reveals that defendants have consistently prevailed in well over 90% of cases since the ADA's inception. This empirical evidence has led many commentators to conclude that the ADA's Title I has failed to improve workplace conditions for individuals with disabilities.

This article attempts to assess the efficacy of Title I through a different lens. It focuses on several data sets that have previously received little attention. It examines Equal Employment Opportunity Commission merit resolutions, lawsuit settlement statistics, and reports concerning reasonable accommodation …

Politics Of Deference And Inclusion: Toward A Uniform Framework For The Analysis Of ‘Fundamental Alteration’ Under The Ada, Kerri Lynn Stone

Faculty Publications

In 2001, a disabled professional golfer prevailed in his claim to use a golf cart on the PGA Tour in the Supreme Court case of PGA Tour, Inc. v. Martin. While the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”) mandates that essential and reasonable accommodations be made for plaintiffs like Martin, it does not require any actions that would fundamentally alter the nature of a defendant’s “goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, or accommodations.” This article surveys federal opinions that undertook the fundamental alteration query posed by Titles II and III of the ADA in the five years since Martin was decided, and …

Preplacement Examinations And Job-Relatedness: How To Enhance Privacy And Diminish Discrimination In The Workplace, Sharona Hoffman

Faculty Publications

Medical testing in the workplace is raising growing concern in light of increasingly available genetic tests and what is perceived as a general assault on individual privacy in the United States. Almost seventy percent of major U.S. firms require individuals who receive job offers to undergo medical testing prior to the commencement of employment, and the law does not restrict the scope of these examinations. Thus, employers test job candidates not only for fitness for duty and use of illegal substances, but also for a variety of conditions including susceptibility to workplace hazards, breast and colon cancer, sexually transmitted diseases, …

The Paradox Of Personality: Mental Illness, Employment Discrimination, And The Americans With Disabilities Act, Deirdre M. Smith

Faculty Publications

Both medicine and the law devote considerable concern to drawing lines, that is, to classifying and making distinctions. In medicine, such line-drawing occurs when a person is designated healthy or ill, normal or disordered. In the law, such line-drawing determines who does and does not bear legal responsibility for a given situation. This Article reviews the demarcation drawn by psychiatry and the courts between disfavored personality and mental illness, a dichotomy not based upon empirical science and therefore, wholly susceptible to social construction and implementation. While society may pathologize noxious personalities, thus making them disabilities, it is loath to extend …

Generalizing Disability, Michael Ashley Stein

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Hostile Environment Actions, Title Vii, And The Ada: The Limits Of The Copy-And-Paste Function, Lisa A. Eichhorn

Faculty Publications

Two federal circuits, borrowing from Title VII jurisprudence, recently recognized a cause of action for a disability-based hostile environment under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Neither opinion, however, considered how the analysis of a disability-based hostile environment claim under the ADA might differ from that of a race- or sex-based hostile environment claim under Title VII. This Article examines the differing theories of equality underlying the two statutes and argues that, because the statutes prohibit discrimination in fundamentally different ways, courts must resist the temptation to copy and paste Title VII doctrine into ADA hostile environment opinions. This Article …

Corrective Justice And Title I Of The Ada, Sharona Hoffman

Faculty Publications

Several recent studies have shown that employment discrimination plaintiffs filing lawsuits in federal court under Title I of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) win only approximately five percent of their cases. This Article argues that this phenomenon is attributable at least in part to the ADA's very flawed definition of the term "disability." It suggests that the current definition be abandoned and that a new approach be adopted, one that would reshape the ADA's protected class so that it more closely resembles a discrete and insular minority, such as those traditionally protected by the civil rights laws. While Title …

Empirical Implications Of Title I, Michael Ashley Stein

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Reasonable Accommodations And Awkward Compromises: Issues Concerning Learning Disabled Students And Professional Schools In The Law School Context, Lisa A. Eichhorn

Faculty Publications

Under the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, colleges and universities are prohibited from discriminating against qualified students with learning disabilities and must reasonably accommodate such disabilities so that students have a genuine opportunity to complete academic programs successfully. Not surprisingly, just like their non-disabled peers, a number of learning disabled college graduates are choosing to enter professions such as law and medicine. Their entry into professional schools has raised a number of legal issues concerning their qualification to matriculate, their need for accommodations, and their eventual ability to practice successfully. …