What they do not do is excuse misconduct.
That's the important takeaway from Brantley v. University of Texas at Austin, a recent 5th Circuit decision that rejected a student's attempt to use the Rehabilitation Act as a shield against discipline for repeatedly harassing a professor.
The facts are difficult.
After taking one of the professor's classes, the student continued emailing him. Not once or twice. According to the court, hundreds of times.
The emails ranged from academic topics to deeply personal discussions of trauma, mental health, and self-diagnosis. The professor repeatedly tried to establish boundaries. He provided information about campus mental health resources. He asked that future communications be limited to academic matters. Eventually, he pleaded with her to stop contacting him altogether, explaining that the constant emails were causing him "a tremendous amount of distress."
She kept emailing.
The university ultimately placed her on disciplinary probation.
Her lawsuit didn't deny the conduct. Instead, she argued that her disabilities—including ADHD, complex PTSD, and PMDD—caused her communication patterns, and that disciplining her without accommodating those disability-related behaviors violated the Rehabilitation Act.
The 5th Circuit wasn't persuaded.
Relying on long-standing ADA precedent from the employment context, the court reiterated an important principle: disability discrimination laws do not require employers—or universities—to tolerate harassment simply because the person engaging in it has a disability.
As the court put it, federal anti-discrimination law cannot be used to "immunize" someone from the consequences of harassing another person.
That's exactly right.
This principle matters well beyond higher education. Employers routinely face similar arguments when employees engage in threatening, abusive, or otherwise inappropriate workplace conduct and later claim the behavior stemmed from anxiety, PTSD, ADHD, bipolar disorder, or another medical condition.
The ADA requires employers to consider reasonable accommodations that help qualified employees perform their jobs. It does not require employers to excuse misconduct that violates legitimate workplace rules or infringes on the rights of others.
That's not because disability rights are unimportant.
It's because everyone else has rights too.
Coworkers have the right to work free from harassment. Supervisors have the right to establish reasonable professional boundaries. Employers have the obligation to maintain safe, respectful workplaces.
Perhaps most importantly, arguing that disability should excuse harassment does a profound disservice to the millions of employees living with disabilities who never engage in this type of conduct.
Most people with ADHD don't harass their supervisors.
Most people with PTSD don't ignore repeated requests to stop contacting coworkers.
Most people with mental health conditions understand and respect professional boundaries every day.
When litigants suggest that disability itself excuses harassment, they reinforce exactly the kind of harmful stereotypes disability laws were enacted to eliminate—that people with disabilities cannot control themselves or should be held to different standards of conduct.
That's wrong as a matter of law. It's even worse as a matter of public perception.
Disability accommodation and workplace accountability are not mutually exclusive. Good employers can—and should—provide reasonable accommodations while also enforcing neutral conduct rules that protect everyone in the workplace.
The ADA isn't a license to harass. And courts are right to keep it that way.