Hall v. Minnesota Board of Physical Therapy

Background

Tatum E. Hall has a graduate degree in physical therapy and alleged that brain surgery and a tumor impaired several learning-related skills, including language processing, attention, concentration, and cognition. She previously took the physical-therapy licensing examination in Wisconsin three times without accommodations and did not pass.

Hall later applied to take the examination in Minnesota and requested accommodations recommended by her doctor: hardcopy materials, an individual testing room, extended time, an additional testing day, and removal of unscored experimental questions. The Minnesota Board of Physical Therapy initially granted some accommodations. Hall took the examination twice with partial accommodations and did not pass. After the Minnesota Disability Law Center contacted the Board on Hall’s behalf, the Board approved all of Hall’s requested accommodations and told her she had three remaining opportunities to take the examination. Hall had not taken the examination again when she filed suit.

Hall also made two requests under the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act. The Board provided 52 pages of documents, but Hall alleged that the response was incomplete.

Claims and jurisdictional issue

Hall asserted four categories of claims: a Fourteenth Amendment claim brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, claims under Titles I, II, and III of the Americans with Disabilities Act, due-process claims under the Minnesota Constitution, and a claim under the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act.

The Board moved to dismiss for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction. The court treated the motion as a facial challenge and explained that sovereign immunity generally prevents a state or its agencies from being sued in federal court unless the state clearly waives that immunity or Congress validly removes it.

Fourteenth Amendment claim

The court held that the Board, as an agency of Minnesota, was protected by sovereign immunity. Hall did not identify a clear and express waiver of Minnesota’s immunity for § 1983 claims. The court therefore granted the motion to dismiss Hall’s Fourteenth Amendment claim.

The court also considered Hall’s argument that she had a protected property interest in taking the licensing examination with full accommodations. It concluded that access to professional licensure is different from access to education and that Hall had not shown a protected Fourteenth Amendment interest in receiving every requested accommodation. The court noted that the Board had allowed her to take the examination twice with partial accommodations and had later approved all of her requested accommodations.

Americans with Disabilities Act claims

The court dismissed Hall’s Title I claim because the Board was not an employer or another type of covered entity under that part of the statute, and no employment relationship existed between Hall and the Board.

The court dismissed Hall’s Title III claim because Title III concerns private entities that operate places of public accommodation, while the Board is an agency of the State of Minnesota.

The court concluded that Hall had adequately pleaded a Title II claim for purposes of a motion to dismiss. Title II covers discrimination by a public entity, and the court accepted that Hall had alleged a disability, qualification to take the examination, and exclusion or discrimination based on disability. The court nevertheless ruled that sovereign immunity barred the claim. Applying the required analysis for deciding whether Congress validly removed state immunity, the court concluded that professional licensure is not a fundamental right and that applying Title II’s immunity removal to professional-licensing decisions was neither proportionate nor sufficiently related to the constitutional rights Congress could enforce.

The court therefore granted the motion to dismiss the ADA claims.

Minnesota constitutional claims

The court ruled that sovereign immunity also barred Hall’s due-process claims under the Minnesota Constitution. Hall did not identify authority showing that Minnesota clearly waived its immunity from federal-court suits involving those claims. The court therefore granted the motion and dismissed the state constitutional claims.

Minnesota Government Data Practices Act claim

Hall argued that the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act expressly waived immunity by stating that the state had waived immunity for claims under the Act. The court disagreed that this language waived immunity in federal court. It distinguished Minnesota statutes that expressly authorize suits against the state in federal court and concluded that the Data Practices Act’s language was not a clear and unequivocal waiver of federal-court immunity.

The court therefore granted the motion to dismiss the Data Practices Act claim.

Disposition

The court granted the Minnesota Board of Physical Therapy’s motion to dismiss and dismissed Tatum E. Hall’s complaint with prejudice. The court directed that judgment be entered.