On May 9, 2001, President Bush nominated Terrence Boyle to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. The Fourth Circuit is comprised of North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia and Maryland.
On June 1, 2005, Boyle’s nomination was reported out of the Senate Judiciary Committee on a vote of 10-8.
Boyle currently sits on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina. Ronald Reagan appointed Boyle to the seat in 1984.
Judge Boyle was nominated to the Fourth Circuit based on the recommendation of former Senator Jesse Helms. Helms has supported Boyle's elevation to the Fourth Circuit for years and convinced the first President Bush to nominate Boyle to the Fourth Circuit in 1991. However, Boyle was never confirmed and his nomination lapsed at the end of 1992.
Boyle has never ruled in favor of a plaintiff in any published Americans with Disabilities Act case during the fifteen years since the ADA was passed. He has consistently ruled against individuals with disabilities in cases brought under the ADA and Section 504. Many of his decisions are based on radical interpretations of disability rights laws, and are completely inconsistent with the plain language of the law, regulations, the decisions of the Supreme Court and other courts, and federal enforcement agencies.
I. Boyle Has Ruled to Limit Congress's Power to Enforce the ADA
Boyle ruled that Congress had no authority to make Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) applicable to the states.
A. Congress’s Power under the Fourteenth Amendment:
Boyle threw out a case brought by individuals with disabilities to challenge the fee imposed for handicapped parking placards. The ADA provides that people with disabilities cannot be charged a fee for reasonable accommodations. Boyle held that the state could not be sued under the ADA because Congress had no power under the Fourteenth Amendment to apply the ADA to the states.
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Boyle's opinion covers the entire ADA. He reached this sweeping conclusion without even considering the long history of pervasive state discrimination against people with disabilities.
Boyle reasoned that the ADA is not remedial legislation in the same sense as other anti-discrimination statutes because it does not treat people equally but instead “seeks to single out the disabled for special, advantageous treatment.” He stated that the ADA demands entitlement, which “has little to do with promoting the 'equal protection of the laws.'"
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Therefore, he ruled that the ADA was not proper legislation under Congress's Fourteenth Amendment power.
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Boyle also reasoned that Congress had improperly tried to change the constitutional standard for evaluating discrimination against individuals with disabilities by finding that individuals with disabilities were a "discrete and insular minority."
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Boyle ruled the same way in another case, involving state prisoners with disabilities.
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Boyle dismissed claims brought by a state prison inmate challenging the prison's failure to make reasonable accommodations for his disability that would enable him to participate in a prison work program. The program would have allowed the plaintiff to earn credits to reduce the length of his sentence.
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In this case, one of the earliest decisions to deny individuals the right to enforce the ADA by applying federalism principles, Boyle wrote:
Although Congress invoked the power to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment in passing the ADA, it is unclear what Fourteenth Amendment right, if any, is vindicated by the Act. The Fourteenth Amendment has traditionally been understood as protecting individuals from state action that would infringe upon individual liberties. The ADA, however, creates positive rights to entitlement against other individuals and state governments... Although framed in terms of addressing discrimination, the Act's operative remedial provisions demand not equal treatment, but special treatment tailored to the claimed disability. In this respect, the ADA differs radically from traditional anti-discrimination laws, such as Title VII, which seek only a state of affairs where individuals are treated in a neutral manner without regard to race, sex, age, etc. Unlike traditional anti-discrimination laws, the ADA demands entitlement in order to achieve its goals. This the Fourteenth Amendment cannot authorize.
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This conclusion has been rejected by the Supreme Court. In Tennessee v. Lane, the Court recognized that “Congress enacted Title II against a backdrop of pervasive unequal treatment in the administration of state services and programs, including systematic deprivations of fundamental rights." The Court held that Congress had the power under the Fourteenth Amendment to apply the ADA to the states in the area of access to the courts.
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At Boyle’s nomination hearing and in his written responses to Judiciary Committee members’ questions, he refused to acknowledge the blatant conflict between his rulings and the Supreme Court’s. It is distressing that a candidate for an appeals court judgeship continues to assert that a position that has been squarely rejected by the Supreme Court is still good law.
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Additionally, the Supreme Court has made clear multiple times that the reasonable accommodation requirement of the ADA and Section 504 is integral to ensuring equal treatment for people with disabilities. See, e.g., Tennessee v. Lane, 124 S.Ct. at 1993 (Congress recognized Athat failure to accommodate persons with disabilities will often have the same practical effect as outright exclusion . . ."); US Airways, Inc. v. Barnett, 535 U.S. 391, 397 (2002) (AThe Act requires preferences in the form of Areasonable accommodations" that are needed for those with disabilities to obtain the same workplace opportunities that those without disabilities automatically enjoy."). Boyle’s insistence that the ADA is not about equality reflects a fundamental failure to understand the lives of people with disabilities.
B. Congress’s Power Under the Commerce Clause
Boyle ruled that Congress had no power to apply the ADA to state prisons under either the Commerce Clause or the Fourteenth Amendment. Thus, the ADA simply did not apply at all to state prisons.
Boyle reasoned that the direct effects of states’ use of prison labor on interstate commerce were “wholly insubstantial within the context of our nation's federalist traditions, to legitimate application of labor laws such as the ADA to state prisons.”
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Boyle’s ruling appears to be one of only two published decisions where a federal court invalidated part of the ADA as outside of Congress's Commerce power.
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Boyle’s ruling in this case contradicts not only the Supreme Court’s decision in Lane, but also the Supreme Court’s recent ruling that Congress did have the power to authorize ADA lawsuits by inmates who have been discriminated against by state prisons, at least in some circumstances.
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II. Boyle has Ruled to Limit the Right to Reasonable Accommodation
Boyle's view of the right to reasonable accommodations under the ADA and Section 504 is contrary to the statute, regulations, and black letter disability law.
In Williams v. Avnet, Inc.,
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Boyle refused to let an ADA employment lawsuit proceed. The suit was brought by a manual punch press operator who sustained permanent injuries in a car accident. She was limited in lifting heavy objects and in heavy pushing and pulling. Upon her return to work, the woman requested the accommodation of a forklift to assist her in doing her job, or alternatively to be reassigned to another position in accordance with the employer's policies. Instead, the employer terminated her.
Boyle held that the requested accommodations were not reasonable. He ruled that reasonableness must be determined from the employer’s point of view, and courts should not second-guess an employer’s decision about whether an accommodation is reasonable unless the accommodation is “obviously reasonable” or there is no serious dispute about its reasonableness.
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He stated that if reasonableness were not determined from the employer’s point of view, the ADA would require courts to act improperly as legislators in making that determination.
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Boyle wrote:
The meaning of ‘reasonable’ within an ADA accommodation context, as evidenced by the decisions of the Fourth Circuit, is grounded in deference to an employer' expert business decision flowing from the assumption that people behave in an economically rational manner, and an understanding that the requirement of reason is a requirement of economic rationality.
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Boyle also ruled that an employer’s financial ability cannot be considered in determining whether an accommodation is reasonable for that employer.
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Boyle then went on to reject the plaintiff' proposed accommodations as “clearly unreasonable.” He ruled that the employer was not required to provide a forklift because the ADA does not require any accommodation that is “substantial.”
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He also said it would be unreasonable to require another employee to assist the plaintiff, even if the assistance was only required for 15 minutes a day.
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Finally, despite Congress' explicit provision in the ADA that reassignment to a vacant position is an example of a reasonable accommodation, Boyle ruled that it would be unreasonable for the employer to reassign the plaintiff to another position, even if its own policies required it to do so.
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Boyle’s statements about the ADA’s reasonable accommodation requirement are completely inconsistent with basic ADA law, and his analysis was Boyle was severely criticized by the Fourth Circuit. While the Fourth Circuit ultimately affirmed the decision, the court observed that Boyle’s analysis of the law was misguided and wrong on a number of grounds, including his determination that reasonableness is a subjective rather than an objective analysis, his refusal to consider types of accommodations that Congress “obviously” considered reasonable, and his suggestion that working is not a “major life activity.”
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The Fourth Circuit found Boyle' deference to the employer' opinion “particularly inappropriate in the summary judgment context, where a court must view evidence in the light most favorable to the non-moving party.”
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III. Boyle Has Ruled to Reduce Medical Privacy
In Butler v. Burroughs Wellcome, Inc.,
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an employee brought a claim under the ADA alleging failure to reasonably accommodate her psychiatric disorder. The plaintiff alleged a history of physical and sexual abuse by relatives. She was diagnosed with “post traumatic stress disorder and severe depression, which led her to have problems dealing with men.”
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During her deposition, the plaintiff objected to a question relating to her sex life and indicated she did not want to discuss any aspect of her marriage.
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She moved for a protective order on the basis that the line of questioning was in bad faith, intended to embarrass her, and irrelevant.
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Boyle denied her motion and ruled that in an ADA case, “a plaintiff’s medical history is relevant in its entirety.”
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He wrote that it would be impossible to answer basic questions about whether a plaintiff was foreclosed from similar employment due to a disability, whether a plaintiff was qualified, or what accommodations were required “without full and complete access to the plaintiff' medical records.”
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Boyle' ruling is inconsistent with most courts’ efforts to limit access to medical records to those relevant and necessary to determine the questions at hand. His ruling forces ADA plaintiffs to choose between avoiding unfettered invasions of their privacy and vindicating their rights.
IV. Boyle is Responsible for Other Troubling Rulings in the Areas of Housing and Employment
Boyle issued a disturbing ruling in a disability case involving group homes, Oxford House v. City of Raleigh,
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The City of Raleigh had adopted a spacing requirement that limited the number of “Supportive Housing Residences” in a particular geographic area. Individuals with disabilities moved into Oxford House, only to find that a transitional home for people with mental disabilities was located too near to Oxford House to meet the City' spacing requirement. Oxford House asked the City to waive the spacing requirement. When the City refused, Oxford House filed a complaint asking the court to declare that the ordinance violated the Fair Housing Act, the ADA and the Constitution. The City then filed a “counterclaim,” asking the judge to declare that the ordinance was legal. Oxford House failed to answer the counterclaim, and a default judgment was entered.
Oxford House then asked the judge to vacate the default judgment, which may be done for "good cause shown" under the federal rules. Boyle denied the request, ruling that Oxford House did not present a meritorious defense because the zoning rules B rules that restrict the number of group homes for individuals with disabilities in any particular area B do not discriminate against those protected by the ADA but discriminate in favor of such individuals.
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Simultaneously, Boyle ruled for the city on the pleadings. The tenants of Oxford House were forced to move immediately as a result of the ruling.
A judge who believes that it is not discriminatory to bar individuals with disabilities in supportive housing from living within 375 yards of other such individuals poses serious concerns. It is difficult to imagine a rule more rooted in prejudice than a rule barring groups of individuals with disabilities from living too close to each other.
In another case, Boyle reversed the decision of a federal magistrate that would have permitted an ADA plaintiff to proceed to trial on her claim that she was denied a promotion based on her disability.
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Federal judges generally give great deference to the findings and conclusions of the magistrates who are frequently assigned to make initial rulings on cases. It is highly unusual for a federal judge to reverse a decision of a magistrate. In this case, Boyle granted summary judgment for the defendant and held that the plaintiff, who claimed she was denied a promotion to a receptionist position due to her mobility impairment, was not qualified for the job she sought. He said that she could not meet minimum attendance requirements because she was enrolled in a nursing class that would conflict with the regular job hours required of a receptionist. Boyle completely disregarded the magistrate’s findings that the employer had presented no evidence that he had told the plaintiff about the attendance requirements, and that she might well have chosen to stop attending school if she knew that her schooling would prevent her from getting the job.
Boyle also based his ruling on his conclusion that the applicant who was given the job was more qualified. Again, Boyle completely disregarded the magistrate' conclusion that controlling Fourth Circuit precedent did not, as the defendant claimed, require a plaintiff to prove she was more qualified than other candidates.
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Brown v. North Carolina Division of Motor Vehicles, 987 F. Supp. 451 (E.D.N.C. 1997). The Fourth Circuit affirmed Boyle' decision on much narrower ground, ruling that only the regulation prohibiting surcharges for reasonable accommodations was not justified as Fourteenth Amendment legislation based on the record presented to the court. Brown v. North Carolina Division of Motor Vehicles, 166 F.3d 698 (4th Cir. 1999), cert. denied, 531 U.S. 1190 (2001).
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Pierce v. King, 918 F. Supp. 932 (E.D.N.C. 1996).
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Boyle made light of the inmate’s claim for accommodations, holding that the ADA “does not create a cause of action for state inmates displeased with their prison work assignments.” Id. at 938.
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In a letter to Senator Kennedy, Professor Erwin Chemerinsky, a well known constitutional law scholar, Supreme Court litigator, and author of a widely read treatise on constitutional law, confirmed that there is simply no way to square Boyle’s rulings in Brown and Pierce with the Supreme Court’s decision in Lane.
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The Fourth Circuit affirmed based on different reasoning, 131 F.3d 136 (4th Cir. 1997), and its decision was later vacated and remanded by the Supreme Court after its ruling in Pennsylvania Dep=t of Corrections v. Yeskey, 524 U.S. 206 (1998) that the ADA applies to state prisons.
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United States v. Georgia, 126 U.S. 877 (2006) (upholding Congress’s power under Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment to authorize ADA lawsuits by state prisoners where the alleged ADA violations also violate the constitution).
