Judge's ADA suit alleges court employees withheld key to restroom, wore hazmat suits after accident
Image from Shutterstock.
A city court judge in White Plains, New York, has filed a disability discrimination suit that claims court employees withheld a key to a nearby restroom, dragged their feet in installing railings for stairs to the bench, and had a “hysterical reaction” when she was unable to make it to the bathroom in time.
Judge Elizabeth Shollenberger alleges violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act and state laws in the suit, filed on Tuesday in federal court in New York City.
According to Shollenberger, the chief administrative judge suspended Shollenberger on two occasions, after employees complained based on “irrational phobia, stigmatization and illegal discrimination.” The New York Law Journal covered the allegations.
Shollenberger is a Yale law grad with 35 years of law practice experience, including 21 years serving low-income people in legal aid. She also has been active in Democratic politics. She was appointed to the judgeship at the end of 2016.
She says she has variety of medical conditions, including obesity, pulmonary hypertension, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, an autoimmune bleeding disorder, lymphedema in her legs and a fungal infection in one leg. The conditions are not contagious. She uses a walker and moves slowly. Medication used to treat active infections affect her gastrointestinal system, requiring her to have quick access to a restroom.
At one point when she was weakened by a bout with pneumonia, court officers refused to help Shollenberger up the steps to the bench, citing union contracts, the suit says.
There were two occasions when Shollenberger was not able to make it to the further-away toilets on time, according to the suit. She tried to clean up the mess and notified court employees. The second incident however, “set in motion a hysterical reaction.”
A courtroom carpet stain led employees to cordon off the courtroom with yellow police tape. When employees entered the courtroom the next day, they appeared to be wearing hazmat suits and breathing masks. When she held court in another courtroom, an employee wore bright yellow rubber gloves. She was suspended the same day, receiving the news in a letter citing issues of public health and operational safety.
The “plaintiff suffered extreme humiliation from all this treatment,” the suit says.
“Raising the specter of a direct threat is easy—it has been done for centuries, to scapegoat anyone whom the community does not like,” the suit says. “Disabled people have long been sequestered and disregarded in the name of public health and safety. The purpose of the federal and state disability discrimination laws is to put a stop to that.”
Defendants in the suit are the chief administrative judge of the New York Unified Court System, Lawrence Marks, and New York Chief Judge Janet DiFiore. The suit cites a belief that the defendants “believed that they could out-wait [the] plaintiff until she would give up trying to enforce her right to perform her appointed judicial duties, or until she would simply get sick and die.”
