Social Security Disability and the ADA: One does not preclude the other
Resolving a split among circuit courts of appeals, the U.S. Supreme Court in May 1999 held that an employee with a disability who requests and receives Social Security disability benefits (SSDI) is not automatically barred from filing a lawsuit under the Americans with Disabilities Act (Cleveland v. Policy Management Systems Corp.). The decision settled the question of whether an individual applying for SSDI benefits is "judicially estopped" from also asserting that he or she is a qualified individual with a disability under the ADA. Overruling the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the two claims do not inherently conflict because the Social Security Act and the ADA apply to disabled individuals in different ways. Whereas the ADA considers the possibility of reasonable accommodation in determining whether a disabled individual can perform the essential functions of a position, the SSA does not take reasonable accommodation into account when it determines whether an individual is disabled for SSDI purposes. In other words, an individual's ADA claim that he could perform his job with reasonable accommodation may be consistent with the same individual's SSDI claim that he could not perform his job without it.
The Ticket to Work Act:
Reasonable accommodation will be the issue
Following the Cleveland decision, Congress passed and the President signed the Ticket to Work and Work Incentives Improvement Act of 1999, specifically to allow people with disabilities or special health care needs to enter or return to work without losing their health care or disability benefits and services. Whether passage of the Act has prompted more disabled individuals to enter the workplace has not as yet been determined. But what is clear is that those individuals who do apply will be immediately recognized as disabled and the issue will be one of reasonable accommodation. Various courts have ruled that the process of making reasonable accommodations available is an interactive one between the employer and the employee, but the nature of the such an interactive process is only in the beginning stages. It is generally accepted that the individual must request an accommodation, but courts have been split on whose burden it is to determine the nature of that accommodation. More litigation on this question can be expected.
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