Despears v. Milwaukee County’s Empirical Analysis
63 F.3d 635 · 1995
Citation profile
34 federal appellate · 6 district · 3 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 59 later decisions — most recently June 2019 · most notably Anderson v. Romero (1995), Dartt v. Browning-Ferris Industries, Inc. (1998)
34 federal appellate · 6 district · 3 state decisions
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Applies 29 U.S.C. § 701 (Employment Opportunities for Individuals With Disabilities Act) · 29 U.S.C. § 706 · 42 U.S.C. § 12101 (§ 2 of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990) · 42 U.S.C. § 12114 (§ 104 of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990)
Relies on Robinson v. State of California · Ford v. Wainwright · Medina v. California · Traynor v. Turnage · Teahan v. Metro-North Commuter Railroad
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 59 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“To impose liability under the Americans with Disabilities Act ... in such circumstances would indirectly but unmistakably undermine the laws that regulate dangerous behavior. It would give alcoholics and other diseased or disabled persons a privilege to avoid some of the normal sanctions for criminal activity. It would say to an alcoholic: We know it is more difficult for you to avoid committing the crime of drunk driving than it is for healthy people, and therefore we will lighten the sanction by letting you keep your job in circumstances where anyone else who engaged in the same criminal behavior would lose it.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“[Ajlcoholics are more likely, probably much more likely, to lose their driver’s license because of drunk driving than people who are not alcoholics, and this is enough to show that there is a causal relation between [plaintiffs] alcoholism and his demotion. * * * [Plaintiff] despite his alcoholism could have avoided the demotion of which he complains by avoiding driving while drunk. His disability concurred with a decision to drive while drunk to produce the loss of license and resulting demotion. The disability contributed to but did not compel the action that resulted in the demotion.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“The refusal to excuse, or even alleviate the punishment of, the disabled person who commits a crime under the influence as it were of his disability yet not compelled by it and so not excused by it in the eyes of the criminal law is not “discrimination” against the disabled; it is a refusal to discriminate in their favor. It is true that the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act require the employer to make reasonable accommodation of an employee’s disability, but we do not think it is a reasonably required accommodation to overlook infractions of the law.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.