The Ohio Supreme Court ruled 4 to 3 last week that Case Western Reserve University had acted legally in rejecting a blind woman who applied to its medical school.
The ruling upheld a decision in December 1994 by a state appeals court, which overturned a lower court’s holding that the university had discriminated against Cheryl Ann Fischer because she was blind. The lower court ordered the university to admit Ms. Fischer and to modify its program so she could participate.
Ms. Fischer, who went to Case Western as an undergraduate, lost her sight in her junior year because of a degenerative disease. She nevertheless completed all of her requirements and graduated cum laude in 1987 with a degree in chemistry. She applied to the university’s medical school for admission that fall. After being rejected, she complained to the Ohio Civil Rights Commission, which took her side and sued the university. The Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas agreed with the commission.
In last week’s ruling, however, Justice Deborah L. Cook said that the lower court had “abused its discretion” in finding the university guilty of discrimination.
The lower court’s findings that “the modifications were reasonable and that Fischer was ‘otherwise qualified’ to participate in C.W.R.U.'s medical school program were clearly erroneous,” Justice Cook wrote.
To admit Ms. Fischer would have required “fundamental alterations to the academic requirements essential to the program” and would have imposed “an undue burden” on the university’s facilities, according to the ruling.
Case Western officials were pleased with the outcome. “We appreciate the court’s decision that we are not discriminating and are maintaining standards of care,” said Nathan A. Berger, interim dean and vice-president for medical affairs at the medical school. “As far as we were concerned, this was about maintaining high standards of care for the medical profession and high levels of medical care for patients.”
In a strongly worded dissenting opinion, Justice Alice R. Resnick called the case one of “prejudice, pure and simple.”
“If a professional door is to be closed to an entire class of people, it should not be done in such a cavalier manner,” she wrote.
The dissenting justices also said the lawsuit was about whether Case Western must comply with state and federal laws that require it to accommodate people with disabilities.
If the university had found that accommodating Ms. Fischer would have required more than a “reasonable” effort, then “admission could be lawfully denied,” wrote Justice Andrew Douglas. But the university, he said, had not fully examined what her inclusion would require.
Ms. Fischer’s case, which rested on an Ohio law that says an institution must take “reasonable” measures to include people with handicaps, has attracted the interest of educators across the country. Advocates for students with disabilities viewed Ms. Fischer’s 1993 victory as an important advancement for blind people.
Ms. Fischer said in an interview last week that the ruling was “pretty disappointing.” “It’s been a long, long haul,” she said. “But just knowing that three of the seven judges felt so strongly helps. And I feel good about standing up for myself. I did what I had to do.”
Ms. Fischer said her lawyers would explore a possible appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Marc M. Maurer, president of the National Federation of the Blind, said that the court was “wrong” and that he hoped the case would continue. “How do Case Western officials know that they would have to modify so much of their program if they haven’t tried it?,” he asked.
Ms. Fischer said repeatedly throughout the trials that arguments against her entering the medical profession held no weight. She said, for example, that she was not planning to go into radiology, whose practitioners must scrutinize x-ray radiographs. “Physicians in other fields send x-rays to a radiologist,” she said. “I would do the same.”
Ms. Fischer, who now conducts research on vocational rehabilitation for the Research Triangle Institute in North Carolina, said she hoped to pursue a career in psychiatry or endocrinology.
Dr. Berger said that at Case Western, medical-school students are trained to be “full and complete physicians.” Ms. Fischer’s disability would prohibit her from taking part in the surgery or radiology training required of all students, he said. “We don’t train physicians just to be psychiatrists.”
Medical students may be trained to pursue a field like surgery, Mr. Maurer said, but even students with vision “are not actually doing surgery. I don’t think that there is anything that a blind person could not do as a medical-school student,” he said.
The full text of the decision by the Ohio Supreme Court affirming the right of Case Western Reserve University to reject a blind applicant to its medical school, including the full texts of the dissenting opinions.