/>iSome employers offer benefits not only to their current employees, but under certain circumstances also offer certain benefits, such as health insurance, to employees who retire from working for them. Employers sometimes modify the terms of benefit policies, programs, and plans for a number of reasons, including to change coverages or eligibility requirements or to adjust contribution rates. Employers looking to make these sorts of changes, or even to discontinue certain retiree benefits, can do so now with more confidence that they won’t violate the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) after a recent decision by the United States Supreme Court.
On June 20, 2025, the Court decided in Stanley v. City of Sanford, Florida that retirees, as former employees, are not covered by the ADA’s anti-discrimination provision when applied to receipt of certain post-employment benefits.
The case was brought by Karyn Stanley, a firefighter who worked for a Florida city’s fire department. When she was hired in 1999, the city offered health insurance until age 65 for employees who retired either with 25 years of service and or those employees who retired due to a disability but prior to having 25 years of service. However, a few years later, in 2003, the city changed its retiree health insurance policy to provide health insurance to age 65 only for retirees with 25 years of service. Employees who retired earlier due to disability would receive coverage not until age 65, as previous, but instead only for 24 months post-retirement.
Ms. Stanley retired from the city’s fire department in 2018 after developing Parkinson’s Disease. Because she did not have 25 years of service at the time she retired due to her disability, under the 2003 policy, Ms. Stanley was eligible for only 24 months of retiree health insurance, and not coverage until age 65, as would have been the case under the policy in effect in 1999 when she was hired. Ms. Stanley sued the city, claiming that its 2003 change in policy limiting health insurance coverage for disabled retirees to 24 months from the prior policy in effect at the time of her hire which provided coverage until age 65 for disabled retirees regardless of years of service, discriminated against her on the basis of her disability in violation of the ADA.
Writing for the majority – only Justice Jackson dissented from the essential holding of the case – Justice Gorsuch explained that Ms. Stanley could not maintain her ADA claim against the city because the ADA only permits “qualified individuals” – those who held and could perform the essential functions of a position at the time of the alleged discriminatory act – to bring suit. Because Ms. Stanley was no longer working for the city nor able to perform the essential functions of her position when she sued the city, the Court explained that she was not covered by the ADA’s anti-discrimination provision, the plain language of which protects only current employees from disability-based discrimination. The Court did note, however, that although Ms. Stanley could not bring her ADA claim, other statutes, including the Rehabilitation Act and state law, may afford alternative avenues for relief.
In light of Stanley, those employers who provide retiree benefits now have more clarity that making changes to benefits that may negatively impact disabled retirees will not violate the ADA. But, as noted, that does not mean that such changes will necessarily be entirely lawful, as other laws may provide protection to disabled retirees or otherwise limit what sort of changes an employer can make in retiree benefit policies, programs, and plans.
