ADA’s Protections Don’t Extend to Retirees, Supreme Court Holds

A retired employee cannot sue under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) for post-employment benefits, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled at the end of its 2024 term.

The case involved Karyn Stanley, who worked as a firefighter for the City of Sanford, Florida beginning in 1999. Stanley developed a disability that forced her to retire in 2018, entitling her to only 24 months of health insurance under a City policy that had been revised in 2003.

Stanley sued, alleging that the City violated the ADA by providing different health insurance benefits to those who retired with 25 years of service and those who retired due to disability.

The district court dismissed her suit, and the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed dismissal.

In an 8 to 1 opinion authored by Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, the Court found Stanley could not sue under the ADA as a retired employee who could no longer hold or seek to hold her job.

Title I of the ADA prohibits discrimination against “qualified individual[s],” defined as someone “who, with or without reasonable accommodation, can perform the essential functions of the employment position that [she] holds or desires.”

This statutory language made Congress’ intent clear with regard to temporal reach, the justices found.

“Those present-tense verbs signal that §12112(a) protects individuals who, with or without reasonable accommodation, are able to do the job they hold or seek at the time they suffer discrimination,” the Court explained. “Conversely, those verbs tend to suggest that the statute does not reach retirees who neither hold nor desire a job at the time of an alleged act of discrimination.”

Reinforcing this reading of the ADA was the statute’s definition of reasonable accommodation, which doesn’t apply to retirees who do not seek or hold a job. The justices also found it instructive that other parts of the statute speak differently, as does Title VII, which lacks a temporal qualifier.

Looking to Supreme Court precedent, the Court noted decisions finding that someone may fall outside of the protections of §12112(a) if she can “no longer do the job.”

Further, the Court was unpersuaded by Stanley or the dissent’s arguments to the contrary, unable to say that Title I’s textual limitations necessarily clash with the ADA’s broader purposes and noting that a variety of other laws besides Title I of the ADA may protect retirees from discrimination with respect to postemployment benefits.

“To sum up, we hold that, to prevail under §12112(a), a plaintiff must plead and prove that she held or desired a job, and could perform its essential functions with or without reasonable accommodation, at the time of an employer’s alleged act of disability-based discrimination,” Justice Gorsuch concluded. “A variety of suits involving retirement benefits might well proceed under that rule. But, given how this particular case comes to use, we cannot say that the court of appeals erred in upholding the dismissal of Ms. Stanley’s complaint.”

Justice Clarence Thomas authored a separate opinion, joined by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, concurring in part and concurring in judgment. Justice Sonia Sotomayor also filed an opinion, concurring in part and dissenting in part—writing separately that a “common-sense understanding of the statutory text” recognizes that when an employer makes a discriminatory change in postemployment benefits that a retiree earned while qualified and employed, the employer discriminates against the person in her capacity as a qualified individual.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined in part by Justice Sotomayor, issued a dissenting opinion, writing that “by viewing this case through the distorted lens of pure textualism, the Court misperceive[d]” the protections of the ADA, adding “a temporal limit it was never designed to be,” and encouraging Congress to “fix the mistake” through legislative intervention.

To read the opinion in Stanley v. City of Sanford, click . 

Why it matters: The opinion resolves a circuit split on the issue, maintaining the law in the Sixth, Seventh, Ninth and Eleventh Circuits while changing law in the Second and Third Circuits, and provides definitive guidance regarding retiree rights under the ADA.