Disability discrimination by police
Police and jails are public entities, and Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act forbids a public entity from discriminating against a qualified person with a disability. Federal appeals courts covering Florida, New Jersey and Pennsylvania have held that the statute applies to arrests. When officers treat the symptoms of a disability as a crime or as resistance, and use force because of it, the ADA claim travels alongside the Section 1983 force claim. This page sets out both, says plainly what is unsettled in New York, and gives the clocks.
Yes, it can be a claim, and often two claims. The force or the arrest itself is judged under the Fourth Amendment like any other. On top of that, the agency may have violated the Americans with Disabilities Act by treating a person worse because of a disability, or by refusing a simple accommodation that would have avoided the harm: an interpreter, a few minutes of time, a call to a crisis team, a jail's continuation of medication.
The people harmed this way are deaf and hard of hearing, autistic, living with epilepsy, diabetes, dementia, intellectual disability or serious mental illness. The pattern is the same: a symptom is read as defiance.
How it happens
- A medical event treated as resistance. A person having a seizure, a diabetic emergency or a stroke cannot follow commands. Officers read the stiff limbs or slurred speech as intoxication or fighting and use force.
- Commands a person cannot hear. A deaf person does not respond to shouted orders and reaches for a phone or a notepad to communicate. Officers treat the silence and the reach as threats.
- A crisis call answered as a crime. A family calls 911 for help with a relative in a mental health crisis. Armed officers arrive, give rapid commands, and the encounter escalates within minutes.
- Autism or intellectual disability misread. A person who avoids eye contact, repeats words, walks away or cannot answer quickly is treated as evasive, then restrained when he panics at being touched.
- No interpreter, no accommodation. A deaf or cognitively disabled person is questioned, booked and asked to sign papers with no interpreter and no explanation he can follow.
- Punished in jail for symptoms. A detainee with mental illness is Tasered, isolated or denied medication for behavior that is part of the illness.
The claim
Title II of the ADA
The statute is one sentence long in substance: no qualified individual with a disability may be excluded from a public entity's services, programs or activities, or be subjected to discrimination by one (42 U.S.C. § 12132). The Supreme Court has held that Title II covers state prisons (Pennsylvania Dept. of Corrections v. Yeskey, 524 U.S. 206 (1998)), so there is no question that it reaches jails and prisons.
Whether it reaches the arrest itself has been decided circuit by circuit.
| Court | States | Holding |
|---|---|---|
| Eleventh Circuit | Florida | Title II applies to arrests; exigency bears on whether an accommodation is reasonable (Bircoll v. Miami-Dade County, 480 F.3d 1072 (11th Cir. 2007)) |
| Third Circuit | New Jersey, Pennsylvania | The ADA generally applies to arrests (Haberle v. Troxell, 885 F.3d 170 (3d Cir. 2018)) |
| Second Circuit | New York | Not published here. We have not verified a published Second Circuit holding on the ADA in arrests |
| Supreme Court | All | The question was presented and then dismissed without an answer (City and County of San Francisco v. Sheehan, 575 U.S. 600 (2015)) |
That gap in New York is not the end of a New York case. It means the ADA theory is argued rather than assumed, and the constitutional claim carries more of the weight. New York also has its own statute: Civil Rights Law § 79-n gives a civil action for bias-related violence or intimidation based on actual or perceived disability, among other grounds, with injunctive relief, damages and discretionary fees.
Section 1983
Force during an arrest or stop is judged by objective reasonableness: the severity of the crime, whether the person poses an immediate threat, and whether the person is actively resisting or fleeing (Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386 (1989)), on the totality of the circumstances with no time cutoff (Barnes v. Felix, 605 U.S. ___ (2025)). A person having a seizure has committed no crime and is not "actively resisting" in any ordinary sense of the words. The Second Circuit has held it clearly established that significant force, including a second Taser cycle, may not be used on a person who is no longer resisting and poses no threat (Jones v. Treubig, 963 F.3d 214 (2d Cir. 2020)). There is no rule that prone restraint is automatically reasonable whenever a person resists (Lombardo v. City of St. Louis, 594 U.S. 464 (2021) (per curiam)). In a jail, a pretrial detainee's force claim requires only objective unreasonableness (Kingsley v. Hendrickson, 576 U.S. 389 (2015)).
New York City's non-police response
B-HEARD, launched in June 2021, sends emergency medical technicians and a mental health clinician to 911 mental health calls. The City reports nearly 35,000 calls through June 2025, and on November 14, 2025 announced a move to full operation by NYC Health + Hospitals in spring 2026. Whether such a team was available and was not sent is a fact worth knowing in a New York City case. The mental health crisis calls page covers those encounters.
What they will argue
There was no time to accommodate. This is the main ADA defense, and Bircoll builds it into the test: exigency bears on whether an accommodation was reasonable. The argument is strong when someone is armed and close. It is weak when the scene was contained, the person was alone in a room or a car, and the officers chose to go in rather than wait.
Qualified immunity. In Sheehan the officers who re-entered the room of an armed, mentally ill woman received qualified immunity on the Fourth Amendment claim. An officer is shielded unless the conduct violated a clearly established right "of which a reasonable person would have known" (Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800 (1982)), and in March 2026 the Supreme Court again reversed a denial of immunity because no precedent placed the question "beyond debate" (Zorn v. Linton, No. 25-297, 607 U.S. ___ (2026)). The qualified immunity page explains the doctrine.
They did not know. Officers will say nothing told them the person was disabled. The 911 call, dispatch notes, body-camera audio and prior calls to the same address answer that.
The city is not liable for its officers. Under Section 1983 a municipality answers only for its own policy or custom (Monell v. Dep't of Social Servs., 436 U.S. 658 (1978)), including a failure to train that amounts to deliberate indifference (City of Canton v. Harris, 489 U.S. 378 (1989)). How officers are trained to handle people in crisis is a classic training question. See the Monell page.
In custody: exhaustion. A prisoner must exhaust available administrative remedies before suing about conditions (42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a)).
Not published here
What a plaintiff must prove to recover money damages under Title II, and the limitation period for a Title II claim in each state, are not in this site's verified ledger. We do not publish a legal standard we have not checked against the primary source. A lawyer answers both in the first conversation.
What people have recovered
The family of Scott Whitley III
A jail detainee with schizophrenia was Tasered 27 times by guards. His death was ruled a homicide. The county settled with no admission of wrongdoing.
Source: Prison Legal News. A public record of someone else's case, not a result of this firm and not a prediction.
The family of Darren Rainey
A mentally ill man was left in a scalding shower at Dade Correctional Institution in 2012 and died.
Source: WLRN. A public record of someone else's case, not a result of this firm and not a prediction.
These are other people's cases, and the distance between the two figures is the point: both men died in Florida custody, and the settlements differ thirtyfold. What a case is worth depends on the injury, the evidence and the defenses; the what a case is worth page explains the factors, and the Florida recovery page explains how Florida's statutory caps shape state-law recoveries.
The clock
The table gives the clocks for the Section 1983 claim and the state-law claims that travel with it. The federal claim needs no notice of claim (Felder v. Casey, 487 U.S. 131 (1988)). The period for the ADA claim is not published here; do not assume it is longer than these.
| State | Federal Section 1983 claim | State-law claim against the government |
|---|---|---|
| New York | Three years (Owens v. Okure, 488 U.S. 235 (1989); CPLR 214(5)). NYPD force: the City-law claim also has three years (N.Y.C. Admin. Code § 8-806) | Notice of claim within 90 days (N.Y. Gen. Mun. Law § 50-e(1)(a)); suit within one year and 90 days (§ 50-i(1)) |
| New Jersey | Two years (N.J.S.A. 2A:14-2); the Civil Rights Act claim needs no tort notice (N.J.S.A. 10:6-2) | Tort Claims Act notice within 90 days, a six-month wait, suit within two years (N.J.S.A. 59:8-8) |
| Florida | Four years (Fla. Stat. § 95.11(3)) | Written claim to the agency within three years (two for wrongful death), then a six-month wait (Fla. Stat. § 768.28(6)) |
| Pennsylvania | Two years (42 Pa.C.S. § 5524; Kach v. Hose, 589 F.3d 626 (3d Cir. 2009)) | Written notice within six months (42 Pa.C.S. § 5522(a)) |
If a criminal charge from the same encounter is still open, talk to the defense lawyer before describing the arrest to anyone, and read the criminal case and civil case page. The New York, New Jersey, Florida and Pennsylvania pages go through each state's rules.
Crisis calls
When a call for help brings armed officers, and what the law says about the force that follows.
Mental health crisis calls →Tasers and restraints
Repeated Taser cycles, prone restraint and tight handcuffs, and the decisions that limit them.
Tasers, chokeholds and restraints →The force claim
The Graham factors, the whole-encounter rule from Barnes, and qualified immunity.
Excessive force →Common questions
Does the ADA really apply to police making an arrest?
Two federal appeals courts in this site's territory have said yes. The Eleventh Circuit, which covers Florida, held in Bircoll v. Miami-Dade County that Title II applies to arrests and that the urgency of the situation bears on whether an accommodation was reasonable. The Third Circuit, which covers New Jersey and Pennsylvania, held in Haberle v. Troxell that the ADA generally applies to arrests. We have not verified a published Second Circuit holding for New York, and we do not state one.
What is the difference between the ADA claim and the Section 1983 claim?
They ask different questions of different defendants. The Section 1983 force claim asks whether an officer's force was objectively unreasonable, and the officer can raise qualified immunity. The ADA claim asks whether a public entity, such as the city or the sheriff's office, discriminated against or failed to accommodate a person with a disability. Many cases plead both.
The officers did not know about the disability. Is there still a case?
It is harder. What officers knew or could plainly see matters to both claims. A medical bracelet, a family member shouting that he is autistic, a 911 call that described a mental health emergency, or a prior history at the same address are all ways knowledge is shown. Request the 911 recording and dispatch notes early.
How long do I have?
For the Section 1983 claim: three years in New York, two in New Jersey, four in Florida and two in Pennsylvania, with much shorter notice periods for state-law claims, including 90 days in New York and New Jersey. The limitation period for a Title II ADA claim is not published on this site because it is not in our verified ledger. Work from the shortest clock.
Tell us what happened.
One conversation with an attorney, in your language. We tell you which claims the facts support, which deadline runs first for the agency involved, what evidence to preserve this week, and whether a pending criminal case changes the timing. If it is not a case we can take, we say so and tell you where to go.
(718) 484-7510If a criminal charge is still open, talk to your defense lawyer before you describe the arrest to anyone, including us. English, Russian and Spanish in-house; an interpreter for any other language. Contingency fee, confirmed in writing before we begin.