CCL urged the Supreme Court to revive a civil-rights lawsuit filed on behalf of a disabled person that had been dismissed because the plaintiff only suffered emotional-distress damages. CCL's amicus brief was filed on behalf of the American Association for Justice in Cummings v. Premier Rehab Keller, which the Court will take up in the coming term.

     Under the Rehabilitation Act, recipients of federal funds are obligated not to discriminate against persons with disabilities. In this case, a woman who needed a sign language interpreter sought physical therapy from the defendant, a recipient of federal funding, but was turned away because of the request for an interpreter. She tried going to another physical therapy provider, but found it ineffective. The defendant was the only local provider capable of what she needed. When she returned and was again refused service, she sued. 

     The federal district court found that she had no cognizable damages, having only sued for the emotional distress she suffered. It likened emotional distress damages to punitive damages, which the Supreme Court had held were unavailable for statutes like the Rehabilitation Act, which could only provide remedies similar to those available in contract cases because the federal funding created a contract-like obligation. The U.S. Court of Appeals for Fifth Circuit affirmed, but lodged its reasoning in the rarity with which emotional-distress damages are awarded in contract cases and because those scarce instances would not have provided defendants with notice of these damages being a consequence of its discriminatory act.

    While the plaintiff, remedies scholars, and the U.S. government all focused briefs on the long tradition of emotional-distress damages being available in contract cases, particularly where the breach of contract was likely to cause distress, CCL's brief demonstrated that the underlying bias against emotional-distress damages was ill-taken. It showed that empirical studies demonstrate that juries do a good job assessing the damages, align closely with the severity of the injury, and largely duplicate the assessments that are made by judges in bench trials. It said that the assumption held by the lower courts and by the defendant that emotional-distress damages are unbounded because they have no discernible market value was wrong in practice and should not influence the legal determination before the Court.