In Stanley v. City of Sanford, Fla., 2025 WL 1716138 (U.S. June 20, 2025), the U.S. Supreme Court interpreted the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and addressed the question of whether that statute “reaches discrimination against retirees who neither hold nor desire a job whose essential tasks they can perform with reasonable accommodation.”
The Court answered this question in the negative.
From the decision:
The ADA contains five titles separately addressing employment, public entities, public accommodations, telecommunications, and miscellaneous matters. 104 Stat. 327–328. Ms. Stanley brought her suit under Title I, which speaks to employment. Section 12112(a) provides Title I’s general liability rule for disability discrimination. It makes it unlawful for a covered employer to “discriminate against a qualified individual on the basis of disability in regard to … compensation,” among other things.
The parties disagree about the meaning of this language, but their dispute is a narrow one. They take as given that retirement benefits, like those at issue here, qualify as “compensation.” See Hishon v. King & Spalding, 467 U.S. 69, 77, 104 S.Ct. 2229, 81 L.Ed.2d 59 (1984); Newport News Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Co. v. EEOC, 462 U.S. 669, 682, 103 S.Ct. 2622, 77 L.Ed.2d 89 (1983). For purposes of our review, we may also assume that the City’s revision to its retirement-benefits plan constituted “discrimina[tion] … on the basis of disability.” The only question that separates the parties is whether § 12112(a) addresses discrimination against retirees like Ms. Stanley. She (and two circuits) think the answer is yes; the City (and several other circuits) believe otherwise.
To resolve that disagreement, we turn, as we must, to the statutory terms Congress has given us. Section 12112(a) tells us that Title I prohibits discrimination against “qualified individual[s].” And a qualified individual, Title I continues, is someone “who, with or without reasonable accommodation, can perform the essential functions of the employment position that [she] holds or desires.” § 12111(8).
From these directions, one clue emerges immediately. “[T]o ascertain a statute’s temporal reach,” this Court has “frequently looked to Congress’ choice of verb tense.” Carr v. United States, 560 U.S. 438, 448, 130 S.Ct. 2229, 176 L.Ed.2d 1152 (2010). And here, Congress has made it unlawful to “discriminate against” someone who “can perform the essential functions of ” the job she “holds or desires.” 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. 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 assessment is the statute’s definition of “reasonable accommodation.” Title I, recall, prohibits discrimination against an individual who can perform essential job functions “with or without reasonable accommodation.” § 12111(8); see § 12112(a). And a “reasonable accommodation,” the ADA provides, refers to things like “job restructuring,” modifying “existing facilities used by employees,” and altering “training materials or policies.” § 12111(9). Those kinds of accommodations make perfect sense when it comes to current employees or applicants. But it is hard to see how they might apply to retirees who do not hold or seek a job.
Section 12112(b) conveys a similar message. That provision offers examples of what constitutes “ ‘discriminat[ion] against a qualified individual on the basis of disability.’ ” So, for instance, subsection (b)(6) defines discrimination to include using certain “qualification standards, employment tests or other selection criteria” unless they are “job-related for the position in question.” Plainly, that mandate aims to protect jobseekers. But it makes no sense in the context of retirees who do not seek employment. The same goes for subsection (b)(7), which requires that “tests concerning employment … accurately reflect the skills” and “aptitude” of an “employee or applicant.” It would be strange for employers to test the job skills of former employees who do not plan to return to work. This pattern repeats itself throughout § 12112(b), underscoring § 12112(a)’s focus on current and prospective employees—not retirees.
Instructive, too, is the fact that another part of the statute speaks differently. Where § 12112(a) prohibits certain acts of employment discrimination against “a qualified individual,” § 12203(a) prohibits retaliation against “any individual” who opposes a discriminatory act. That Congress used different language in these two provisions strongly suggests that it meant for them to work differently. After all, when a document uses a term in one place and a materially different term in another, “ ‘the presumption is that the different term denotes a different idea.’ ” Southwest Airlines Co. v. Saxon, 596 U.S. 450, 458, 142 S.Ct. 1783, 213 L.Ed.2d 27 (2022) (quoting A. Scalia & B. Garner, Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts 170 (2012)).
Further evidence still comes from examining Title I of the ADA in light of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 78 Stat. 253, as amended, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e et seq. The two statutes share much in common, not least the fact that they both address employment discrimination. See Mount Lemmon Fire Dist. v. Guido, 586 U.S. 1, 4, n. 1, 139 S.Ct. 22, 202 L.Ed.2d 262 (2018). But the statutes also bear differences we have found illuminating in the past. See, e.g., EEOC v. Abercrombie & Fitch Stores, Inc., 575 U.S. 768, 773, 135 S.Ct. 2028, 192 L.Ed.2d 35 (2015). And one difference concerns the class of people the statutes protect. Title VII protects “employees,” § 2000e–3(a), a term that law defines without “any temporal qualifier,” Robinson v. Shell Oil Co., 519 U.S. 337, 342, 117 S.Ct. 843, 136 L.Ed.2d 808 (1997). In keeping with that unqualified term, Title VII sometimes bars discrimination against former employees as well as current ones. Id., at 341, 117 S.Ct. 843. But elsewhere in Title VII, context clarifies that “the term ‘employee’ refers unambiguously to a current employee.” Id., at 343, 117 S.Ct. 843. That is true, for instance, where the statute links the term “employee” to present-tense verbs like work and has. Id., at 341, n. 2, 343, 117 S.Ct. 843. The upshot? Even if the ADA’s reference to a “qualified individual,” like Title VII’s reference to an “employee,” might be read in isolation to encompass retirees, once Congress yokes those kinds of terms to present-tense verbs—such “holds,” “desires,” and “can perform”—that assumption becomes considerably less plausible.
In sum, the Court held that, to prevail under the ADA, “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” and that under the circumstances of this case, the lower court did not err in dismissing the plaintiff’s complaint.