Mentally Ill Workers Rarely Prevail in ADA Discrimination Claims, Survey Finds

Workers who have a disability, especially those with mental illness or substance abuse disorders, have little chance of prevailing when they file employment discrimination cases against their employer.

In its fifth annual survey of such cases brought under the ADA, the American Bar Association’s Disability Law Reporter found that employers won nearly 96 percent of discrimination cases filed in courts and 73 percent of cases filed as administrative complaints with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

The survey, whose results are reported in the May-June issue of Mental and Physical Disability Law Reporter, examined the outcomes of 429 cases that were decided in 2001. Of these, employers emerged victorious in 314 cases, while employees won just 14 of the claims. In the remaining 101 cases charging disability discrimination, the claims’ merits were not decided, often because the EEOC decided complainants were not eligible to sue under the terms of the ADA.

A total of 86 of the 429 cases involved mental illness, substance abuse, or a combination of the two, the researchers noted. The chances of an employee prevailing in an ADA-related case involving these disorders are slim to none, they found. For example, of the 70 cases in which the disability was attributed to mental illness, the employee won once, while employers won 54 cases. (There was no resolution in the rest of the cases. Also, it is not known how many employees are successful in getting accommodations from their employers and thus have no need to file claims or suits.)

No Victories in 2001

In the 13 substance abuse claims, employees had no victories in 2001, and the same result turned up in the three cases involving comorbid mental illness and substance abuse.

The researchers pointed out that the “largest category of case decisions are those in which employers prevailed summarily, without the merits of the employees’ claims ever being considered.”

They blame this situation in large part on the ADA’s complex procedural and technical requirements, which, they noted, create “difficult obstacles for plaintiffs to overcome.” These obstacles include “satisfying the requirement that the plaintiff meet the ADA’s restrictive definition of disability—a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits a major life activity, a record of such an impairment, or being regarded as having such an impairment—and still be qualified to perform essential job functions with or without reasonable accommodation.”

In addition, the functional assessment of the worker’s disability must evaluate whether it is corrected or correctable through medications or other measures, such as prosthetic devices or therapies, that mitigate the severity of the impairment’s functional consequences.

Psychiatrist Marcia Scott, M.D., cochair of the APA Committee on Psychiatry in the Workplace and a disability expert, stressed in an interview with Psychiatric News, however, that in the minds of the law’s framers, “the purpose of the ADA was to get those who had pervasive problems into the workforce and keep them there. The purpose was not to adjudicate the problems of worker-employer relationships or those caused by temporary illness, which are clearly covered by disability benefits” rather than the ADA.

She pointed out as well that to be eligible for protection under the ADA, the person’s limitations must extend to functions beyond just work.

Scott suggested that having an illness, such as depression, bipolar disorder, panic disorder, or even PTSD, that is characterized by occasional recurrences and remissions “is not the same as being pervasively disabled, even at baseline. These people don’t need the ADA. They need benefits when they are too sick to work and physician help returning to work,” she asserted. The law was not meant to cover temporary medical conditions or exacerbations of illnesses, even if those flare-ups could be considered a disability. And an employee must be able to do the essential function of his or her job to be eligible for ADA provisions, not necessarily every function, Scott added.

Scope of Act Clarified

The U.S. Supreme Court clarified the scope of the ADA this year when it ruled in a case against Toyota Motor Manufacturing that to qualify for ADA protections, a worker’s disability must be “permanent or long term.”

“No one believed the ADA would do much for the severely mentally disabled, even though they hoped it would,” said Scott. “The accommodations advocated for the severely mentally disabled are often unrealistic for an employer and tend to stigmatize the employee—things such as high walls, extreme quiet, not working with others. The accommodations that best serve workers with a chronic, disabling mental condition are access to additional treatments, supportive treatments, a limited but well-structured job, and sometimes direct supervision.”

Despite the marked lack of success in getting legal redress for ADA-based claims, Jennifer Mathis, an attorney and ADA expert with the Judge David Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, said she hopes people with mental illness or substance abuse disabilities do not become so discouraged by these data that they fail to file complaints when they feel they are victims of disability discrimination.

Mathis explained to Psychiatric News why it is so difficult for employers and mentally disabled workers to agree on remedies that would avoid ADA-related legal claims—and why such workers have a hard time convincing courts that an employer has violated the ADA.

For example, “many of the accommodations needed by individuals with mental illnesses, while they are not expensive, are not as simple for employers to understand and to do as are accommodations” for other conditions, she said. “Accommodating someone with a mental illness may require some flexibility and entail trying different things to see what works, such as flexible scheduling, leave time, working at home, or eliminating marginal job duties.”

She added, “Plaintiffs with mental illnesses often lose cases because it appears [to the court or EEOC] that the employer made some effort to accommodate them, even though the accommodations tried were really not effective.”

The process of achieving a solution that satisfies the employer and the worker is often so difficult, and stigma so deeply rooted, that the result turns out to be “bad blood between employer and employee,” Mathis explained, “leading agencies and courts to conclude that an employee was let go not based on prejudice, but simply based on a personality conflict.”

Scott cautioned, however, that “a reasonable accommodation isn’t a job with no stress. The ADA is not relapse prevention. If workers can’t do the essential functions of their job, they need another job,” and psychiatrists can play an important role in helping patients realize this. ▪