The question before the United States Supreme Court in Stanley v. City of Sanford was “Under the [ADA], does a former employee—who was qualified to perform her job and who earned post-employment benefits while employed—lose her right to sue over discrimination with respect to those benefits solely because she no longer holds her job?”
Background
Karyn Stanley (the plaintiff) began working as a firefighter for the City of Sanford, Florida (City) in 1999. At first, she planned to serve for 25 years. Part of the reason for that decision had to do with health insurance. When she was hired, the City offered health insurance until age 65 for two categories of retirees: (i) those who retired with 25 years of service; and (ii) those who retired earlier because of a disability.
In 2003, the City changed its policy. Going forward, it said, the City would continue to pay for health insurance up to age 65 for retirees with 25 years of service; however, for those who retired earlier due to disability, the City would now provide health insurance for just 24 months, unless the retiree started receiving Medicare benefits sooner. At some point after the City revised its policy, Stanley began to suffer from an unspecified disability, and in 2018, that disability forced her to retire earlier than she had planned. As a result, under the City’s revised policy, she was entitled to just 24 months of health insurance.
The plaintiff brought suit claiming that the City violated the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and several other state and federal laws. Providing different health insurance benefits to those who retire with 25 years of service and those who retire earlier due to disability amounted to impermissible discrimination based on disability, she argued. The City responded by filing a motion to dismiss her complaint for failure to state a claim.
The district court denied that motion in part, allowing some of Stanley’s claims to proceed. But as to her ADA claim, the district court said that the complaint alleged that the City had treated her worse than other similarly situated individuals because of her disability—what’s known as a disparate treatment claim. To state such a claim under the ADA, § 12112(a) required her to allege, among other things, facts sufficient to show that she was a “qualified individual” at the time of the City’s alleged discrimination. But here the court reasoned, the discrimination Stanley alleged—reduced healthcare benefits—didn’t take place until after she retired. And by then, she wasn’t a “qualified individual” under the ADA because she wasn’t someone “who, with or without reasonable accommodation, can perform the essential functions of the employment position that such individual holds or desires.” As a result, the court held, it had no choice but to grant the City’s motion to dismiss her ADA claim.
The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the district court’s holding, concluding that § 12112(a) doesn’t reach allegations of discrimination against a retiree “who does not hold or desire to hold an employment position” that she’s capable of performing with reasonable accommodation. Similar to the Eleventh Circuit, the Sixth, Seventh, and Ninth Circuits have said that Title I’s antidiscrimination provision “does not protect people who neither held nor desired a job with the defendant at the time of discrimination.” But the Second and Third Circuits have concluded that the ADA’s definition of “qualified individual” is “ambiguous,” and they’ve resolved that ambiguity “in favor of” extending the statute to reach retirees like the plaintiff here.
The Supreme Court granted certiorari to resolve the disagreement in the circuits as to whether § 12112(a) reaches discrimination against retirees who neither hold nor desire a job whose essential tasks they can perform with reasonable accommodation.
The Supreme Court Affirms
Justice Neil Gorsuch announced the judgment of the Court and wrote that § 12112(a) 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 disagreed about the meaning of this language, but their dispute was a narrow one, the justice said. They take as given that retirement benefits, like those at issue here, qualify as “compensation.” And for purposes of review, Gorsuch assumed that the City’s revision to its retirement benefits plan constituted “discrimina[tion] . . . on the basis of disability.” The only question that separated the parties was whether § 12112(a) addresses discrimination against retirees like the plaintiff. She (and two circuits) thought the answer is yes; the City (and several other circuits) say no.
To resolve that disagreement, the Court looked at the statutory terms Congress provided. Section 12112(a) states that Title I prohibits discrimination against “qualified individual[s].” And a qualified individual is someone “who, with or without reasonable accommodation, can perform the essential functions of the employment position that [she] holds or desires.” Congress made it unlawful to “discriminate against” someone who “can perform the essential functions of” the job she “holds or desires.” Gorsuch said that 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 doesn’t reach retirees who neither hold nor desire a job at the time of an alleged act of discrimination.
Justice Gorsuch stated that § 12112(a) does not protect “compensation,” but rather bars employers from “discriminat[ing] against a qualified individual on the basis of disability in regard to . . . compensation.” In other words, the statute protects people, not benefits, from discrimination, the Justice opined. And the statute also says who those people are: qualified individuals, those who hold or seek a job at the time of the defendant’s alleged discrimination. The trouble for the plaintiff was that § 12112(a) doesn’t prohibit disability-based discrimination in the abstract. Instead, it bars an employer from “discriminat[ing] against a qualified individual on the basis of disability.” Judge Gorsuch explained that the term “discriminate against” means to “treat worse” and “refers to distinctions or differences in treatment that injure protected individuals.” Here, the plaintiff’s complaint provided no basis for inferring that the City’s policy injured her in 2003. To the contrary, her complaint suggested that, when the City first issued its policy, she wasn’t disabled and still expected to complete 25 years of service. As a consequence, the first option didn’t apply to the plaintiff. But Gorsuch said that it may be available to others who happen to be retired at the time they sue, if they can plead and prove they were both disabled and “qualified” when their employer adopted a discriminatory retirement benefits policy.
Next, Gorsuch concluded that unlawful discrimination also happens “when an individual is affected by application of a discriminatory compensation decision or other practice.” The plaintiff alleged that happened to her in 2020, when her subsidized health insurance expired. But at that point, she’d been retired for two years, couldn’t satisfy the “requirements of” her job, and wasn’t seeking employment. Thus, this option couldn’t help the plaintiff. However, again, Gorsuch said that this might help others who can show that they were affected by a policy change while they were “qualified individuals,” even if they happen to be retired by the time they bring suit.
In addition, Gorsuch said that unlawful discrimination takes place when “an individual becomes subject to a discriminatory compensation decision or other practice.” This option might be especially promising for plaintiffs in Stanley’s situation, he said. However, this couldn’t form a basis for reversing the Eleventh Circuit’s judgment in this case.
The plaintiff’s complaint didn’t allege what her disability was or when it emerged. Those facts came out later, and it appeared that the plaintiff was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2016. But her complaint said nothing about the timing or nature of her diagnosis, nor did it allege that she worked for any period of time with a disability.
However, again, the Supreme Court stressed that nothing in this opinion prevented future plaintiffs (or perhaps even Stanley herself in a future proceeding) from pursuing a theory along the lines the government proposes. It wasn’t a theory that could help the plaintiff in this stage of this case.
In summary, the Supreme Court held that, to prevail under § 12112(a), 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. Stanley v. City of Sanford, (U.S. Supreme Court, 6/20/2025).
Takeaway
Employers should be aware that the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) doesn’t protect retirees from post-employment benefit discrimination under Title I of the statute.
Justice Gorsuch emphasized that the ADA protects only “qualified individuals”—defined as those who “hold or desire” a job and can perform its essential functions. Here, because Stanley was retired and no longer held or wanted a position, the Supreme Court held that she didn’t meet this definition.
Gorsuch wrote, “The statute protects people, not benefits, from discrimination,” emphasizing that the ADA’s employment protections don’t extend to post-employment benefits for former workers.