john g roberts and john roberts and toyota motor manufacturing kentuchy and ella willams and americans with disabilities act of 1990

Every appellate advocate occasionally needs a "slam-dunk" case. John Roberts got one such opportunity with a case interpreting the Americans with Disabilities Act ("ADA") when he represented the interests of Toyota Motor Manufacturing of Kentucky (534 US 184 (2002)). He secured a unanimous reversal of the 6th Circuit, which held that Ella Williams' inability to do certain manual assembly line work at a Toyota manufacturing plant enabled her to protection under the ADA. This essay describes the issue and shows how Roberts' brief helped narrow the issue in the interests of his client.

The Statute and Relevant Facts of the Case

The ADA is the most recent of the hugely important anti-discrimination statutes passed overwhelmingly by Congress. Its primary purpose was to incorporate disabled people into mainstream American life as far as possible. Although the Congressional "findings" mentioned that there were about 43,000,000 disabled people in 1990, the concept of disability was given a definition that left lots of questions unclear. A disability differed from an impairment, and is defined as "a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more of the major life activities of such individual." Cleary the definition hinges on what "substantially limits" and "major life activity" entail. Though the statute gives no help on those issues, regulations adopted by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission provide as follows, with respect to the latter: "major life activities means functions such as caring for oneself, performing manual tasks, walking, seeing, hearing, speaking, breathing, learning, and working."

Two problems confront us immediately with this definition and regulatory clarification. First, is the EEOC list meant to be exhaustive? And, second and more important, what is a limitation on the major life activity of "working?" Since the statute itself contemplates disability as something to do with inability to work, wouldn't a definition defining disability as inability to work have a circular character to it? Indeed, courts have needed to adopt a "working" test that differs from tests regarding whether other major life activities are substantially limited. As a matter of fact, petitioners successfully claimed in this case that the lower court (6th Circuit) had inappropriately imported the "working" test into the analysis for limitation of "manual labor."

Well, this is getting a little ahead of myself, but let me state a few relevant facts of the case. I will only emphasize facts and procedural issues, because once we are clear on these issues, the decision falls right into place. Ella Williams worked for Toyota in KY for many years. After developing carpal tunnel syndrome and getting workers' compensation payments for a partial injury, she returned to work and was assigned to four tasks in a quality assurance cycle. She could do the first two, relating to inspecting the exterior of the finished vehicles, but found herself unable to complete task three, which entailed "gripping of tools and arms to be kept overhead or at shoulder level repetitively for an extended period of time."

Legal Issues

After she was terminated by the company, either for unwillingness to do this job or for absenteeism, she filed suit under the ADA, alleging six things: that she was disabled by being unable to perform the following six basic life tasks: (1) manual tasks; (2) housework; (3) gardening; (4) playing-with-children; (5) lifting; and (6) working. The District Court granted summary judgment to Toyota, and on appeal she renewed her case only on grounds (1), (5) and (6). However, the Court of Appeals reversed the District Court only on ground (1), finding, therefore, that it didn't have to reach grounds (5) and (6). John Roberts carefully laid out this procedural history, because it showed that all he needed to attack was the Circuit Court's legal argument on manual tasks.

This is important for two reasons. First, Roberts was able to show that the analysis the Circuit Court used was a sort of hybrid analysis where a "class of jobs" for comparison, which is the test under (6), was brought into the (1) analysis. That is, courts have held that a substantial limitation in the major life activity of working means that you have to look at a person's work in comparision with a class of similar jobs and compare what an average person could do with what the plaintiff could or couldn't do. Second, he was able to show that the proper standard to consider a manual labor limitation under the ADA was not whether a person could perform some rather specialized bodily movements at work but whether the person was limited in manual tasks in the normal course of life--such as washing dishes, vacuuming, cleaning, etc. The Supreme Court therefore struck down the 6th Circuit's test and, by looking at the record, concluded that Wiliams did not have a manual tasks disability, because the record concluded she coudld do normal household tasks--cleaning, vacuuming, sweeping, etc.

Conclusion

Analysis of five Roberts appellate briefs (and arguments) to date shows that he was an excellent advocate and brief writer, and was able to formulate his arguments concisely and precisely. Though he normally took the "conservative" side of the law, his arguments were usually affirmed by the Court and, in every case, well within the scope of reasonable positions an attorney and client could take in a case.

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