The Third Circuit held yesterday that a district court ought not to have agreed to handle claims under the Americans with Disabilities Act on a Rule 23(b)(2) class basis. The court said each ADA plaintiff must show himself or herself “qualified” to do work that bias prevented the plaintiff from getting. That put ADA cases on a different footing from sex and race discrimination cases, which don’t make qualification an element of the claim, the court concluded. Hohider v. United Parcel Service, Inc., No. 07-4588 (3d Cir. July 23, 2009).
Blawgletter notes a few fun facts — Chief Judge Scirica, who wrote the big Rule 23 decision, In re Hydrogen Peroxide Antitrust Litig., 552 F.3d 305 (3d Cir. 2008), also authored Hohider; former Associate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor sat on the panel; and the opinion spends about as much of its 87 pages down in footnotes as it does up in text.
