Supreme Court Tees Up Disabled Firefighter Case

The Supreme Court on Thursday scheduled arguments Jan. 13 in the lawsuit filed by Karyn Stanley, a fire-department lieutenant who retired in 2018 at age 47 because of the effects of Parkinson’s disease.

The dispute stems from Stanley losing a health-insurance subsidy two years after she retired. She took the case to the Supreme Court after the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last year said she could not sue under part of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The Biden administration and organizations such as the AFL-CIO, the International Association of Fire Fighters and AARP filed briefs in September backing Stanley. The Supreme Court announced in June that it would take up the case but did not schedule the arguments until Thursday.

Stanley began working as a firefighter for the city in 1999 but was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2016. The city provided a health-insurance subsidy to Stanley for two years after her 2018 retirement before halting it.

In a brief filed in September, Stanley’s attorneys wrote that the city in 1999 — when Stanley was hired — provided health-insurance subsidies up to age 65 for firefighters who retired after 25 years of service or who retired because of disability. The city changed the policy in a 2003 cost-cutting move to scale back the benefit to two years for employees who retired early because of disability, the petition said.

The brief said the end of the subsidy resulted in Stanley facing an additional $1,000 a month in health-insurance costs and alleged that the policy violates the Americans with Disabilities Act.

“Lt. Stanley served as a firefighter for nearly two decades, risking life and limb to protect her community,” the brief said. “The benefits she seeks to protect were earned through years of dedicated, dangerous service. Yet under the Eleventh Circuit’s rule, she loses protections that would have safeguarded those benefits — at the moment the protections matter most. This perverse outcome would pull the rug out from under firefighters, police officers, teachers, and others who become disabled through years of service to their communities and country. Congress never enacted this arbitrary regime, which makes outright discrimination unlawful up until an employee’s last day of work — and then perfectly lawful the moment she clocks out for the last time.”

Attorneys for the city face a Nov. 12 deadline for filing a response to Stanley’s arguments. But in a May brief about whether the Supreme Court should hear the case, the city disputed the allegations, saying Stanley “simply failed to satisfy the city’s service-based criteria for earning the subsidy to age 65. Had she served 25 years, she would have received it regardless of her disability.”

“Petitioner (Stanley) retired early with only 20 years of service,” the city’s attorneys wrote in the May brief. “Although her reason for retiring early is indeed tragic, it did not render the denial of the subsidy to age 65 unlawful or even unfair. Nondisabled retirees with only 20 years of service also did not receive the subsidy to age 65, no matter how unfortunate their reasons for retiring early. In fact, petitioner was treated better than non-disabled retirees with the same amount of service because while they received no subsidy at all, petitioner received the subsidy for 24 months out of compassion for her disability.”

A key issue is whether Stanley could sue under the Americans with Disabilities Act. A three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Stanley, as a former employee, could not sue under what is known as Title I of the law. The panel cited an 11th Circuit precedent that a “former employee who does not hold or desire to hold an employment position cannot sue over discriminatory post-employment benefits.”

“We (in the precedent) recognized that the ADA protects against discrimination in fringe benefits, such as health insurance, because these benefits have always been recognized as one example of a term, condition, or privilege of employment,” the ruling in Stanley’s case said. “But because the ADA prohibits discrimination only as to those individuals who hold or desire to hold a job, we reasoned that a former employee cannot bring suit under Title I to remedy discrimination in the provision of post-employment fringe benefits.”

But in the September brief at the Supreme Court, Stanley’s attorneys argued the Americans with Disabilities Act allows former employees to sue over retirement benefits. The brief said the appeals court’s interpretation “would leave retirees unprotected against even the most egregious discrimination.”