Toyota Motor Manufacturing, Kentucky, Inc. v. Ella Williams (534 U.S. 184)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided January 8, 2002 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 534 U.S. 184 · 122 S. Ct. 681
- Decided
- January 8, 2002
- Term
- October Term 2001
- Vote
- 9–0
- Majority author
- Justice O'Connor
- Issue area
- Civil Rights
- Disposition
- Reversed and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Conservative
Opinion excerpt
Justice O’Connor delivered the opinion of the Court. Under the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA or Act), 104 Stat. S28,42 U. S. C. § 12101 et seq. (1994 ed. and Supp. V), a physical impairment that “substantially limits one or more . . . major life activities” is a “disability.” 42 U. S. C. § 12102(2)(A) (1994 ed.). Respondent, claiming to be disabled because of her carpal tunnel syndrome and other related impairments, sued petitioner, her former employer, for failing to provide her with a reasonable accommodation as required by the ADA. See § 12112(b)(5)(A). The District Court granted summary judgment to petitioner, finding that respondent’s impairments did not substantially limit any of her major life activities. The Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit reversed, finding that the impairments substantially limited respondent in the major life activity of performing manual tasks, and therefore granting partial summary judgment to respondent on the issue of whether she was disabled under the ADA. We conclude that the Court of Appeals did not apply the proper standard in making this determination because it analyzed only a limited class of manual tasks and failed to ask whether respondent’s impairments prevented or restricted her from performing tasks that are of central importance to most people’s daily lives. HH Respondent began working at petitioner’s…
Excerpt of a 32,752-character opinion. The full text and citation network load in the interactive viewer above.