The U.S. Supreme Court has granted the certiorari petition of a retired Florida firefighter, who has asked the high Court to consider whether the anti-discrimination provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) apply to post-employment benefits for retirees. Karyn Stanley is challenging a decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, which dismissed her discrimination suit against the city of Sanford, Florida, for allegedly illegally limiting health benefits for disabled city retirees. The case is Karyn D. Stanley v. City of Sanford, Florida, Case number 23-997, U.S. Supreme Court.
In its decision, the Eleventh Circuit found that the ADA applies only to current, not former, employees because the statute uses present-tense language. Based on this analysis, the Court ruled that only current job applicants and individuals who are already employed can sue under the ADA based on alleged discrimination.
In contrast, Stanley argues that the Eleventh Circuit ruling conflicts with rulings from the Second and Third Circuits, which both have held that the ADA allows current and former employees to file suits concerning benefits. However, the Sixth, Seventh, and Ninth Circuits have issued decisions consistent with the Eleventh Circuit's ruling. The clear split among the Circuit courts likely led to the Supreme Court granting Stanley's petition for certiorari based on the following question: "Whether a person who was qualified to perform their job and received benefits after their employment ended loses their ability to sue for benefit-related bias under the ADA if they no longer hold that job."
Stanley retired from the fire department in 2018 after a diagnosis of Parkinson's disease in her forties. When she filed suit against the city in 2020, she claimed that when she was hired in the late 1990s, the city policy was to subsidize retirees' health insurance until they turned sixty-five, regardless of when they retired or how many years they worked for the city.
Nonetheless, in 2003, the city changed its policy to require that employees work 25 years to have their health insurance subsidized until age 25. The health insurance benefit would end after two years for employees with less than 25 years of service.
Stanley argued that the city's policy discriminated against workers who retired due to a disability. In opposing the petition for certiorari, the city unsuccessfully argued that its policy was nondiscriminatory because Stanley did not earn the benefits she sought. The city also cited the circuit courts and the U.S. Equal Opportunity Commission for the proposition that paying retirees different benefits for different years of service was lawful.
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