Rochelle L. Smith v. General Motors, L.L.C.

Whether the Fifth Circuit’s affirmance of the district court’s dismissal of ADA and TCHRA claims for failure to exhaust administrative remedies in a de­ ferral state violates due process under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments by imposing overly rigid fil­ ing requirements that conflict with Supreme Court precedents on equitable tolling and dual-filing mech­ anisms, creating a circuit split with more lenient in­ terpretations in the Ninth and Second Circuits, and departing from accepted practices in federal disability law enforcement.

Whether lower courts’ reliance on pre-ADAAA definitions of “disability” (e.g., requiring “significant restriction” rather than “broad coverage”) constitutes a legal error and departure from the ADAAA’s statu­ tory mandate and Supreme Court guidance in Sutton v. United Air Lines, Inc., 527 U.S. 471 (1999) and Toyota Motor Manufacturing, Kentucky, Inc. v. Wil­ liams, 534 U.S. 184 (2002), as amended by Congress, raising an important federal question about uniform application of federal disability law for untreated chronic conditions like traumatic brain injury and PTSD.

Whether the Fifth Circuit’s narrow application of the continuing violation doctrine to discrete acts of disability discrimination (e.g., failure to accommodate and wrongful termination) conflicts with National Railroad Passenger Corp. v. Morgan, 536 U.S. 101 (2002), where ongoing patterns of discrimination should toll limitations periods, presenting a nation­ ally important issue for workers in deferral states suf­ fering from cumulative harms.