Dare v. State Dept. of Motor Vehicles
| Decision Date | 15 April 1999 |
| Docket Number | No. 97-56065,97-56065 |
| Citation | 191 F.3d 1167 |
| Parties | (9th Cir. 1999) WILLIAM ROBERT DARE; GARY PETILLO, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. STATE OF CALIFORNIA; DEPT. OF MOTOR VEHICLES, Defendants-Appellants |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit |
[Copyrighted Material Omitted] Angela Sierra, Deputy Attorney General, San Diego, California, for the defendant-appellant.
Andrew R. Hall, Elizabeth Staggs-Wilson, Davis, Wright & Tremaine, Los Angeles, California, for the plaintiffs appellees.
Mary H. Williams, Assistant Attorney General, Salem, Oregon, for the amicus curiae.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Central District of California; J. Spencer Letts, District Judge, Presiding, D.C. No. CV-96-05569-JSL-Anx.
Before: Dorothy W. Nelson, Ferdinand F. Fernandez, and William A. Fletcher, Circuit Judges.
Opinion by Judge D.W. Nelson;Dissent by Judge Fernandez
This case involves a challenge under the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, 42 U.S.C. SS 12101, et seq. (West Supp. 1999) ("ADA"), and its regulations to California's $6 biennial fee for disability parking placards. The State of California, Department of Motor Vehicles [hereinafter "California"], appeals the district court's grant of partial summary judgment in favor of William Robert Dare, Gray Petillo, and the class of plaintiffs they represent. California claims that the fee does not violate the ADA and that a blanket prohibition on such nominal fees is unconstitutional. We disagree and affirm the district court.
California has a comprehensive priority parking program for qualifying disabled individuals and veterans. See Cal. Veh. Code. SS 295.5, 295.7 (West 1999). California provides these individuals with extensive priority parking and exemptions from all parking meter fees and most parking time restrictions. See id. SS 22511.5, 22511.7, 22511.8. To prevent abuse, California limits access to these privileges to vehicles displaying state-issued disability license plates or parking placards. See id. SS 22507.8, 22511.5. California imposes significant fines upon illegal use of disability parking spaces and authorizes local entities to establish enforcement units. See id. SS 4461, 4463(d), 22507.9, 22511.8, 22511.56, 22511.58, 42001.5.
Registered vehicle owners who are disabled themselves or who use their vehicles to transport disabled individuals at least 51% of the time can obtain disability license plates. California charges the standard license plate fees for these special plates. See id. SS 5007(a), 9250. In lieu of or in addition to a disability license plate, California issues disability parking placards to disabled individuals for a $6 fee. See id. S 22511.55. Individuals may use these portable placards in multiple vehicles. The placards expire if not renewed every two years, and California charges fees for renewal or replacement. See id. S 22511.55(a)(3) & (c)(2). The placard fees partly defray the cost of the disability parking program.
On August 13, 1996, Dare and Petillo, two disabled individuals, filed a class action lawsuit challenging California's $6 placard fee as a violation of ADA Title II and its promulgating regulations. Dare and Petillo allege that the fee constitutes an impermissible surcharge upon measures necessary to provide the nondiscriminatory treatment of individuals and groups required by the ADA. They rely on 42 U.S.C.S 12132, which states that "[s]ubject to the provisions of this subchapter, no qualified individual shall, by reason of such disability, be excluded from participation in or denied the benefits of the services, programs, or activities of a public entity, or be subjected to discrimination by any such entity." 42 U.S.C. S 12132. To prove the ADA's particular prohibition of surcharges on parking permits, Dare and Petillo cite 28 C.F.R. S 35.130(f), promulgated by the Department of Justice in implementing the ADA, which states that
[a] public entity may not place a surcharge on a particular individual with a disability or any group of individuals with disabilities to cover the costs of measures, such as the provision of auxiliary aids or program accessibility, that are required to provide that individual with the nondiscriminatory treatment required by the Act or this part.
The district court granted partial summary judgment with respect to the class of people qualifying as disabled under the ADA,1 found the fee to be an impermissible surcharge, and ordered a permanent injunction against California's imposition of the fee. California timely appeals.
We have jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. S 1292(a)(1) (West Supp. 1999) to review the district court's interlocutory order granting a permanent injunction. Because the district court's partial summary judgment order provides legal authority for the injunction and is thus inextricably bound with it, we also have jurisdiction to review that order. See Paige v. State of California, 102 F.3d 1035, 1040 (9th Cir. 1996).
We review for abuse of discretion the district court's grantof a motion for a permanent injunction, see Gaudiya Vaishnava Soc. v. City of San Francisco, 952 F.2d 1059, 1062 (9th Cir. 1991), but review any determination underlying the grant of the motion by the standard that applies to that determination, see Multnomah Legal Servs. Workers Union v. Multnomah County Legal Aid Serv., 936 F.2d 1547 1552 (9th Cir. 1991). We review de novo a district court's grant of a motion for partial summary judgment. See Thompson v. Holy Family Hosp., 121 F.3d 537, 539 (9th Cir. 1997).
This case raises two main issues: (1) Does California's $6 placard fee violate Title II of the ADA and its implementing regulations, and, if so, (2) was Congress's enactment of Title II of the ADA a valid exercise of its power underS 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment to abrogate California's Eleventh Amendment immunity from suit? Because we answer both of these questions in the affirmative, we affirm the district court's grant of partial summary judgment and a permanent injunction against imposition of the placard fee.
Analyzing whether California's $6 placard fee violates the ADA requires three inquiries. First, what obligations does Title II impose upon states regarding fees for measures under the ADA? Second, does Public Law 100-641, 23 U.S.C.S 402 (West Supp. 1999), which contemplates a fee for disabled parking placards as part of a uniform system for disabled parking, limit states' Title II obligations? Third, are these obligations violated by California's $6 fee for parking placards? As explained below, we conclude that the $6 fee constitutes a surcharge for required measures in violation of the ADA and its implementing regulations.
In order to evaluate whether a fee constitutes a surcharge that violates Title II of the ADA, we conduct a two-part inquiry. First, as a threshold matter, we consider whether the measure for which California levies the fee is "required to provide that individual or group nondiscriminatory treatment" as mandated by the ADA. 28 C.F.R. S 35.130(f). If California charges for a measure not required under the ADA, the inquiry ends; 28 C.F.R. S 35.130(f) only forbids surcharges for "required" measures.
Second, we evaluate whether the fee for the measure is a surcharge; in other words, we consider whether it constitutes a charge that nondisabled people would not incur. If nondisabled people pay the same fee for an equivalent service, the charge to disabled people would not constitute a surcharge on a "required" measure. Thus, for example, a state can charge a fee for disabled license plates so long as it charges the same fee for nondisabled license plates.
Because surcharges against disabled people constitute facial discrimination, the meaningful access test formulated by the Supreme Court in Alexander v. Choate, 469 U.S. 287 (1985), does not apply. Under this test, a court considers whether the allegedly discriminatory measure prevents "meaningful access to the benefit that the grantee offers." Id. at 301. The Ninth Circuit has applied this test in the ADA context to evaluating whether facially neutral laws violate S 12132. See Hunsaker v. Contra Costa County, 149 F.3d 1041, 1042-43 (9th Cir. 1998); Crowder v. Kitagawa, 81 F.3d 1480, 1484 (9th Cir. 1996).
Using this standard in the context of facially discriminatory laws, however, would ignore the clear language of Title II. Cf. Bay Area Addiction Research & Treatment, Inc. v. City of Antioch, 179 F.3d 725, 733-35 (9th Cir. 1999) (). S 12132 covers not only "exclusion from participation in or [denial of] benefits of the services, programs, or activities of a public entity," but also being "subjected to discrimination by any such entity." 42 U.S.C. S 12132. By reviewing all S 12132 claims under a meaningful access test, this Circuit would focus only on exclusions and denials, and ignore completely the discrimination clause, not to mention the explicit language of the ADA regulation at issue here. Other courts evaluating fees similar to the one at issue here have read the statute and ADA regulation together rather than applying a meaningful access test. See Thompson v. Colorado, 29 F. Supp.2d 1226, 1231 (D. Colo. 1998); Thrope v. State of Ohio, 19 F. Supp.2d 816, 824 (S.D. Ohio 1998); McGarry v. Director, Dept. of Revenue, 7 F. Supp.2d 1022, 1028 (W.D. Mo. 1998). We thus follow their approach and do the same; we hold that when states apply charges to required measures, we consider whether these fees constitute a surcharge forbidden under the ADA.
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