Trickle-Down Ledbetter
Garcia v. Brockway -
A bad precedent knows no bounds.
Consider the case of Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. We know the conservative majority's 5-4 decision was a horrible blow to workers' rights and victims of pay discrimination. Click here and here to learn more about the Ledbetter decision.
Unfortunately, it doesn't end there.
The effects of Ledbetter are not confined to employment cases. Last week, the Ninth Circuit issued an en banc opinion in a fair housing case that relied heavily on the statute of limitations reasoning employed in Ledbetter. In Garcia v. Brockway, the court severely limited the enforceability of the Fair Housing Act (FHA)—a law enacted in part to protect disabled people from discrimination in housing. The court held that under the law, a person claiming that a building's design or construction fails to meet FHA standards must file a complaint within two years of the completion of construction, rather than within two years of when the disabled person first experiences the discrimination by not being able to access the building. In other words, like the discriminatory employer in Ledbetter, a builder who fails to construct a building according to the regulations plainly laid out in the FHA is completely immune from suit if the violation goes unnoticed for two years. These builders are immune even if no one—much less a disabled person who would be affected by the missing required accommodations—inspected the property within that two year timeframe. This is a fairly common occurrence—many new apartments remain vacant for some time after construction is complete, and many more may not have disabled tenants within two years.
The judges in the majority understood the consequences of their decision: "Some aggrieved persons may not encounter the violation until decades after the limitations period has run and thus will be unable to file a civil claim, even though they have standing to raise the claim." The dissent explained the issue even more plainly. "[T]he majority takes an Act that was designed to protect disabled persons by mandating that multifamily housing be made accessible to them and construes its statute of limitations in a way that solely benefits the housing construction industry and renders the statute of far less use to disabled individuals than Congress intended."
The majority's interpretation of the FHA goes against common sense, longstanding agency interpretation, and congressional intent. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court's Ledbetter precedent bolstered such an approach. Congress, in passing the FHA, sought to issue "a clear pronouncement of a national commitment to end the unnecessary exclusion of persons with handicaps from America's mainstream." But a reading of the FHA like the Ninth Circuit's that requires private enforcement actions to be brought within two years of the completion of construction clearly undermines this goal. No matter. Flouting congressional intent and practical application was okayed by the Supreme Court in Ledbetter, so the Ninth Circuit's reasoning in denying disabled Americans the legal means to vindicate their right to fair housing was supported by the most powerful court in the country.
The Garcia case illustrates the long-term consequences of Supreme Court decisions that trickle down—sometimes in unexpected ways—to the lower courts. In Ledbetter, the Supreme Court's conservative majority, led by Justice Alito, made it harder for victims of pay discrimination to seek justice. That majority also made it easier for business interests to escape liability for failure to comply with federal law. Ledbetter established a precedent that eviscerates the scope and spirit of civil rights laws. Lower courts are bound to follow Supreme Court precedent. As such, these courts often feel constrained to apply both the letter and the spirit of those precedents; the Ninth Circuit majority extended the injustice of the Ledbetter decision beyond aggrieved workers to disabled individuals seeking access to housing. Who knows what will be next?
