Overview

Police use-of-force litigation is commonly framed under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and the Fourth Amendment. Where an encounter involves a person with a disability–including serious mental illness, intellectual or developmental disability, autism, deafness or hearing impairment, mobility impairment, neurological disability, or another condition affecting communication, perception, behavior, or compliance–two additional federal statutes may provide a distinct theory of liability: Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), 42 U.S.C. § 12131 et seq., and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, 29 U.S.C. § 794(a).

These statutes do not simply duplicate an excessive-force claim. The Fourth Amendment asks primarily whether the force was objectively reasonable under the totality of the circumstances. The disability statutes pose a different question: whether the public entity discriminated because of disability or failed to make a reasonable modification that would have allowed the disabled person to receive police services, participate in the encounter, or be taken into custody without disability-based disadvantage. That distinction matters. A plaintiff may lose a § 1983 excessive-force claim but still pursue an ADA or Rehabilitation Act theory; conversely, the existence of a disability does not automatically make force unlawful or require officers to ignore an immediate threat.

The central issues are:

1. whether the person is protected by the statute;
2. whether the police activity falls within the statute;
3. whether disability materially affected the encounter;
4. whether a reasonable modification was available;
5. whether exigency or immediate danger made the proposed modification unreasonable;
6. causation; and
7. the remedy sought.

Statutory Framework

Title II of the ADA

Title II provides that:

no qualified individual with a disability shall, by reason of such disability, be excluded from participation in or denied the benefits of the services, programs, or activities of a public entity, or be subjected to discrimination by such entity.

42 U.S.C. § 12132. A public entity includes state and local governments and their departments and agencies, meaning police departments, sheriff’s offices, and municipalities generally fall within Title II’s coverage.

Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act

Section 504 provides that no otherwise qualified individual with a disability shall, “solely by reason of her or his disability,” be excluded from participation in, denied the benefits of, or subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance. 29 U.S.C. § 794(a).

The practical difference

The two statutes are frequently analyzed together but are not identical. Title II applies to state and local public entities generally and does not depend on receipt of federal funding; its causation formulation is “by reason of” disability. Section 504 generally requires the relevant program or activity to receive federal financial assistance and employs the narrower phrase “solely by reason of” disability, which can make causation more demanding in cases involving multiple concurrent factors. In most police-encounter cases, plaintiffs plead both.

Why These Claims Are Different From § 1983

Section 1983 is a vehicle for enforcing federal constitutional or statutory rights against persons acting under color of state law. An excessive-force claim under § 1983 ordinarily focuses on the individual officer’s use of force, while ADA Title II and Section 504 generally focus on the public entity’s treatment of a person with a disability. Several structural differences follow from that distinction.

The defendant is different. A Title II claim ordinarily runs against the public entity, not an individual officer in that officer’s personal capacity; Section 504 similarly targets the covered program or entity, whereas § 1983 commonly permits claims against individual officers.

Qualified immunity is different. Individual officers may assert qualified immunity against § 1983 damages claims, but that doctrine does not operate in the same way against a municipality or public entity sued directly under Title II or Section 504. This can make the disability statutes particularly important where a constitutional violation is difficult to establish, clearly established law is lacking, or the challenged conduct reflects an agency-level failure to accommodate rather than one officer’s isolated act.

The municipal liability framework is also different. Under § 1983, a plaintiff seeking municipal damages must ordinarily identify a policy, custom, final-policymaker conduct, or other recognized Monell route that caused the constitutional violation. Under Title II and Section 504, the cause of action runs directly against the covered entity, so a plaintiff need not first establish that an individual officer violated the Fourth Amendment. However, where compensatory damages are sought, most circuits require proof of intentional discrimination–commonly assessed through a deliberate indifference standard–which creates its own demanding entity-level showing. That is a different inquiry from Monell deliberate indifference.

Two Principal Police-Encounter Theories

Federal courts commonly describe two recurring ADA theories in law-enforcement encounters.

1. Wrongful-Arrest Theory

Under the wrongful-arrest theory, police allegedly misinterpret lawful conduct caused by disability as criminal behavior–symptoms of neurological disability mistaken for intoxication, inability to hear commands mistaken for defiance, disability-related behavior mistaken for disorderly conduct, atypical communication interpreted as obstruction, or involuntary movements interpreted as resistance. The central premise is that officers arrested or confronted the person because they confused manifestations of disability with criminal conduct, not because the conduct was genuinely dangerous or illegal. This theory does not fit every force case. Where the person actually engages in dangerous conduct–such as assaulting an officer with a knife–the fact that the conduct may have resulted from mental illness does not render it nonexistent.

2. Reasonable-Modification / Accommodation Theory

The second theory applies where police have a legitimate reason to investigate, detain, arrest, transport, perform a welfare check, or otherwise interact with the person but allegedly fail to reasonably modify their procedures to account for a known disability. Potential modifications include slowing the encounter, using simpler communication, allowing additional processing time, using written communication with a deaf person, reducing unnecessary sensory stimulation, waiting briefly for backup, using crisis-intervention personnel, requesting a negotiator, permitting a caregiver or family member to communicate, maintaining distance, avoiding unnecessary physical contact, or changing transportation procedures. None of these is automatically required in every case; the statutory question is whether the proposed modification was reasonable under the circumstances.

Reasonable Modification Is Context Dependent

Title II regulations generally require public entities to make reasonable modifications in policies, practices, or procedures when necessary to avoid disability discrimination, unless the modification would fundamentally alter the nature of the service, program, or activity. In policing, reasonableness is highly fact-specific. Relevant considerations include the immediacy of the threat, seriousness of the suspected offense, weapon possession, proximity to officers or civilians, whether the person is contained, availability of time, whether officers know of the disability, availability of specialist resources, communication ability, feasibility of the modification, risk created by delay, and whether officers have already attempted accommodation. A modification that is reasonable during a contained welfare check may be unreasonable during an active stabbing.

Exigency and the Circuit Split

The most important unresolved doctrinal issue is whether Title II applies during an unsecured, exigent police encounter.

Majority approach: exigency informs reasonableness

Several circuits hold that Title II applies to police encounters, including arrests, while recognizing that exigency is part of the accommodation analysis. Under this approach, Title II does not disappear merely because the situation is dangerous; danger may instead make a proposed accommodation unreasonable. This position has been followed in materially similar form by the Third, Fourth, Ninth, and Eleventh Circuits, among others, all of which reject a categorical exclusion of arrests from Title II’s reach.

Fifth Circuit: Hainze categorical exigency rule

The Fifth Circuit takes a materially different approach. In (Hainze v. Richards, 2000), officers responded to a suicidal man who was intoxicated, carrying a knife, and reportedly threatening suicide or “suicide by cop.” The Fifth Circuit held that Title II does not apply to an officer’s on-the-street response to a reported disturbance before the officer has secured the scene and ensured that there is no threat to human life, with accommodation required only after the area is secure. This is a categorical exigency limitation.

Current status

The split remains unresolved by the Supreme Court. In (City & County Of San Francisco v. Sheehan, 2015), the Court granted review in part to address whether Title II requires accommodations during the arrest of an armed, violent, mentally ill person but ultimately dismissed the ADA question as improvidently granted after San Francisco changed its litigation position, leaving undecided whether Title II applies to arrests and how exigency should affect the accommodation analysis. The issue returned to the Supreme Court in Winder v. Gallardo, No. 24-975, which expressly asked the Court to resolve the split between the Fifth Circuit’s Hainze rule and circuits treating exigency as part of the reasonableness inquiry. The Supreme Court denied certiorari on June 23, 2025. That denial is not a merits ruling, and accordingly, as of October 2026, the circuit split remains unresolved.

(City & County Of San Francisco v. Sheehan, 2015) is central to understanding the overlap between mental disability, police tactics, and force. Police were sent to take Teresa Sheehan, a woman with serious mental illness, to a facility for evaluation and treatment. When officers first entered her room, Sheehan grabbed a knife, threatened to kill them, and forced them to retreat. The officers closed the door but, rather than waiting for backup, reentered. Sheehan again confronted them with the knife; pepper spray was ineffective, and officers shot her multiple times.

The ADA theory

Sheehan alleged that the City failed to reasonably accommodate her disability by failing to respect distance, wait for backup, use less confrontational tactics, and account for the known effects of her mental illness. The Ninth Circuit held that Title II applies to arrests and concluded that a jury could consider whether reasonable accommodation was required.

What the Supreme Court decided

The Supreme Court did not resolve the ADA question, dismissing that portion of the writ as improvidently granted. The Court instead resolved the individual officers’ Fourth Amendment qualified-immunity issue. Sheehan therefore illustrates the analytical separation among Fourth Amendment force, qualified immunity, and ADA reasonable accommodation: the same incident can generate all three questions, and resolution of one does not settle the others.

(Gohier v. Enright, 1999) involved a man with schizophrenia who advanced toward a police officer with a knife and was fatally shot. The Tenth Circuit rejected a broad rule categorically excluding arrests from Title II but also explained why the wrongful-arrest theory did not fit: the officer had not mistakenly interpreted harmless disability-related conduct as criminal; the subject’s threatening conduct was real. The court emphasized that disability-related assaultive conduct can still justify a defensive police response. A mental illness may help explain why a person acted, but it does not necessarily eliminate the threat created by that action–a distinction of particular importance for edged-weapon research.

(Hainze v. Richards, 2000) is exceptionally relevant to edged-weapon cases. Police were told that Hainze was suicidal, depressed, intoxicated, carrying a knife, and threatening suicide or “suicide by cop.” The Fifth Circuit rejected the ADA and Section 504 claims arising from the unsecured phase of the encounter, holding that Title II does not apply to on-the-street police responses before officers have secured the scene and ensured that there is no threat to human life. In the Fifth Circuit, a plaintiff may therefore be unable to use Title II to challenge the precise pre-shooting period when accommodation arguably mattered most. In other circuits, the same exigency is instead considered when deciding whether the requested accommodation was reasonable–a difference that can be outcome determinative.

(Bircoll v. Miami-dade County, 2007) involved a deaf motorist arrested for DUI. The Eleventh Circuit treated the ADA as applicable to police activity but evaluated accommodation in light of the exigencies and practical circumstances of the arrest. The court concluded that police had effectively communicated under the circumstances through speech, lip reading, written material, and other means. The case illustrates that the ADA generally requires reasonable accommodation, not the individual’s preferred accommodation in every circumstance.

(Buchanan v. Maine, 2006) arose from a welfare check involving a mentally ill man. Deputies entered Buchanan’s home; Buchanan repeatedly stabbed one deputy, and the other deputy shot and killed him. The estate pursued both § 1983 claims and ADA Title II theories alleging failure to reasonably accommodate Buchanan’s mental-health needs. The First Circuit rejected the disability claims on the record before it. The case demonstrates that ADA theories can arise in precisely the encounter type at the center of the Lab’s research–welfare call, mental-health crisis, police entry, edged-weapon assault, lethal police response–and reinforces that the ADA does not operate as a generalized medical-malpractice statute.

(Seremeth v. Board Of County Commissioners Of Frederick County, 2012) involved a deaf man during a domestic-violence investigation. The Fourth Circuit accepted that Title II applies to police investigations and rejected the Fifth Circuit’s categorical approach, treating exigency as relevant to whether the accommodation provided was reasonable rather than as a threshold bar to Title II coverage. The case is one of the clearest appellate expressions of the majority model: exigency affects the reasonableness of accommodation; it does not categorically suspend Title II.

(Vos v. City Of Newport Beach, 2018), is among the most significant ADA decisions for the Lab’s research. Police responded to a convenience store where Vos was behaving erratically and had armed himself with sharp objects; officers knew they were dealing with a person displaying signs of mental illness. Vos ultimately ran toward officers holding an object, and officers shot him. The Ninth Circuit allowed ADA and Rehabilitation Act reasonable-accommodation claims to proceed, emphasizing that factual questions remained about whether officers had time, opportunity, and possible alternatives–including de-escalation, communication, or specialized assistance. The court rejected the notion that a plaintiff must prove officers provoked the confrontation before an ADA accommodation claim can exist, holding that accommodation is a separate inquiry. The decision is especially important because it establishes that the fact that a subject ultimately presents an immediate edged-weapon threat does not necessarily foreclose the earlier ADA question of whether reasonable accommodation was available before the encounter reached that point.

(Haberle v. Troxell, 2018), involved a suicidal man with serious mental illness who had stolen a firearm. Officers discussed alternatives including establishing a perimeter, bringing in crisis negotiators, and using the man’s partner to communicate, but one officer instead approached and announced police presence; the man then killed himself. The Third Circuit held that Title II can apply to police conduct during an arrest. The plaintiff’s initial damages claim failed because deliberate indifference had not been adequately alleged, but the court permitted amendment. In (Haberle v. Borough Of Nazareth, 2019), the Third Circuit held that the amended complaint plausibly alleged deliberate indifference by the municipality. Together, the Haberle decisions demonstrate that ADA liability can focus not only on an officer’s split-second choice but on agency policy, training, known recurring interactions with people experiencing mental-health crises, and institutional failure to adopt reasonable accommodations–making the ADA potentially important where a § 1983 claim fails because the challenged action does not amount to a constitutional violation.

ADA Liability Does Not Mean Force Was Excessive

The analytical separation between these theories should be explicit. A court can conclude that the officer reasonably perceived a deadly threat and that the shooting did not violate the Fourth Amendment while still finding that the entity faces an ADA question about whether earlier reasonable accommodation should have been provided. Conversely, a Fourth Amendment violation does not automatically establish ADA discrimination. The statutes protect different rights.

Disability-Related Behavior vs Threat Behavior

Police encounters involving mental illness frequently combine disability manifestations, noncompliance, fear, confusion, irrational speech, self-harm, weapon possession, and genuine assaultive conduct. The legal analysis should distinguish among them.

Disability manifestations–delayed response, inability to process commands, unusual movement, apparent confusion, inability to communicate conventionally–may support an accommodation requirement. Genuine threat conduct–stabbing, lunging with a knife, charging another person, pointing a firearm, attempting to access a weapon–falls outside the accommodation analysis: the ADA does not require officers to pretend those actions do not create danger.

Many edged-weapon cases occupy a difficult middle category. A person who holds a knife but remains stationary, directs the blade toward themselves rather than officers, is contained within a location, and presents no immediate risk to civilians, while officers know of severe mental illness and have time and distance available–but initiate closer contact–presents the strongest overlap among ADA reasonable accommodation, officer-created jeopardy, de-escalation, and Fourth Amendment totality.

What Counts as a Reasonable Accommodation?

There is no universal checklist. Depending on the facts, courts have considered proposed accommodations including waiting for backup, delaying entry, using a negotiator, using trained crisis personnel, allowing a family member or caregiver to communicate, maintaining greater distance, avoiding rapid physical confrontation, using written communication, using sign-language interpretation where practicable, modifying transportation, changing the manner in which commands are delivered, or adjusting ordinary police procedures. The claimant ordinarily must identify a modification that was both:

1. necessary because of disability; and
2. reasonable under the circumstances.

Immediate Threat and the Direct-Threat Concept

ADA regulations recognize that public entities need not permit an individual to participate where that individual poses a direct threat to the health or safety of others. In police cases, however, courts usually address immediate danger through the broader reasonableness-of-accommodation analysis rather than as a categorical direct-threat exclusion. Weapon possession is highly significant, but it does not automatically answer whether every earlier or alternative accommodation was unreasonable. Timing matters: a person who is already stabbing an officer presents a fundamentally different accommodation problem from a contained suicidal person holding a knife twenty feet away.

Knowledge of Disability

A public entity cannot reasonably modify its response for a disability it has no reason to know exists. Knowledge may come from dispatch, family members, clinicians, prior police contacts, the person themselves, medical-alert information, obvious manifestations, or circumstances making the disability apparent. The law does not generally require officers to diagnose hidden mental illness in real time, but a formal diagnosis is not always necessary where the need for accommodation is obvious.

Reasonable Accommodation Does Not Mean Best Possible Tactic

The ADA does not constitutionalize or federalize every preferred de-escalation technique. The question is not whether officers could have handled the situation better; it is whether a reasonable disability-related modification was necessary and available under the circumstances. Poor tactics and disability discrimination can overlap, but they are not synonymous.

Title II and Section 504 Remedies

Injunctive and declaratory relief

Appropriate prospective relief may be available where Article III standing requirements are satisfied. The separate Injunctive Relief and Standing Backgrounder remains relevant.

Compensatory damages

Most circuits require intentional discrimination for compensatory damages under Title II and Section 504, with many courts treating deliberate indifference as sufficient. In this context, deliberate indifference generally requires more than negligence–it commonly involves knowledge that a federally protected disability right is substantially likely to be violated, combined with failure to act despite that knowledge.

Punitive damages

Punitive damages are not available against public entities under Title II or Section 504.

Individual officers

Title II generally does not support individual-capacity damages claims against police officers; the entity, not the officer personally, is the central statutory defendant. This is another major difference from § 1983.

Section 504: Federal Funding Requirement

Section 504 adds a coverage element that Title II does not: the relevant program or activity must receive federal financial assistance. For many police departments and municipalities, federal grants may satisfy this requirement, but the issue should be proved rather than assumed. A research record should distinguish whether federal funding was alleged, admitted, or established, or whether a § 504 claim was dismissed for lack of coverage.

Section 504 Causation

Section 504 employs the phrase “solely by reason of disability,” which can make causation more demanding than under Title II. In force cases involving simultaneous weapon possession, criminal conduct, intoxication, threats, and disability, that “solely by reason of” formulation can become particularly important. The Rehabilitation Act should therefore not be treated as perfectly interchangeable with ADA Title II even when courts analyze them together.

Entity Liability vs Monell

To hold a municipality liable under § 1983, a plaintiff generally must identify a policy, custom, final-policymaker conduct, or another recognized Monell route that caused the constitutional violation. Under Title II and Section 504, the cause of action runs directly against the covered entity, so a plaintiff need not first establish that an individual officer violated the Fourth Amendment–making ADA or § 504 a genuine alternative theory, not merely an add-on. However, where compensatory damages are sought, deliberate-indifference or intentional-discrimination requirements can still create a demanding entity-level hurdle.

Qualified Immunity

Qualified immunity protects individual government officials from some § 1983 damages claims but does not ordinarily shield the municipal or public entity itself from a direct Title II or Section 504 claim. An incident may therefore produce officer qualified immunity under § 1983 while litigation against the public entity under the ADA continues. That distinction was visible in Sheehan, where the Supreme Court granted the individual officers qualified immunity on the Fourth Amendment claim while leaving the ADA issue unresolved.

Relationship to Monell Failure-to-Train Claims

ADA failure-to-accommodate theories can resemble Monell failure-to-train theories factually–both may involve allegations that the agency failed to train officers to respond appropriately to people experiencing mental-health crises. But the legal elements differ. A Monell claim asks whether municipal policy or deliberate indifference caused a constitutional violation, while an ADA claim asks whether the entity discriminated because of disability or failed to provide a reasonable disability-related modification. A plaintiff may succeed on one and fail on the other.

Relevance to Welfare Checks and Emergency Aid

This Backgrounder directly intersects with Emergency Aid, Welfare Checks, and Warrantless Entry. A suicidal person’s disability may simultaneously create the reason police are called, justify protective emergency intervention, and trigger a potential accommodation obligation–requiring analysis at each stage rather than a single consolidated answer. A lawful emergency-aid entry does not automatically defeat an ADA claim, nor does the ADA automatically prevent emergency entry; the two doctrines answer different questions.

Relevance to Officer-Created Jeopardy

ADA accommodation claims and officer-created jeopardy claims can focus on many of the same facts: closing distance, rushed entry, failure to wait for backup, failure to use available communication, failure to use a negotiator, abandonment of containment. The legal questions differ nonetheless. Officer-created jeopardy asks whether pre-force police conduct bears on the constitutional reasonableness of later force. ADA reasonable accommodation asks whether the public entity failed to make a reasonable disability-related modification. The same tactic can therefore be constitutionally permissible under the Fourth Amendment yet disputed under the ADA, or vice versa.

Relevance to Edged-Weapon Encounters

The ADA/Section 504 issue is especially important in edged-weapon cases because mental-health crisis and self-harm are common pathways into police contact. Recurring fact patterns include a suicidal person holding a knife, a welfare check at a home, family members reporting mental illness, officers knowing the weapon is primarily self-directed, an initially stationary or contained person, police closing distance or making entry, the threat shifting toward officers, and lethal force following. Before the threat became immediate, the relevant disability-law question is whether a reasonable disability-related modification was available that the entity failed to provide–potentially including maintaining containment, communicating from greater distance, waiting briefly for crisis personnel, using a family member, reducing the number of officers confronting the person, avoiding unnecessary sensory escalation, delaying physical contact, or using specialist resources. The existence of those possibilities does not prove that any was legally required; the analysis remains fact-specific.

Active Attack vs Contained Crisis

A useful research distinction separates two poles of the threat spectrum. Where a person is stabbing someone, charging an officer, pursuing civilians, or otherwise presenting an immediate deadly threat, the scope for accommodation may be extremely limited. Where the person is holding a knife, primarily threatening themselves, separated from civilians, stationary, behind a barrier, or otherwise contained, the feasibility of accommodation may be substantially greater. This difference helps explain why courts generally resist categorical rules and instead examine the specific facts at the moment accommodation was allegedly required.

Leading Decisions – Chronological

Gohier v. Enright

Gohier v. Enright, 186 F.3d 1216 (10th Cir. 1999) – arrests are not categorically excluded from Title II, but disability does not make assaultive conduct harmless or prevent police self-defense; see full discussion above.

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Hainze v. Richards

Hainze v. Richards, 207 F.3d 795 (5th Cir. 2000) – in the Fifth Circuit, Title II does not apply to on-the-street police responses before the scene is secured and there is no longer a threat to human life; see full discussion above.

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Buchanan v. Maine

Buchanan v. Maine, 469 F.3d 158 (1st Cir. 2006) – ADA claims arising from a welfare-check shooting of a mentally ill man who stabbed a deputy failed on the record presented; demonstrates direct overlap among welfare checks, mental disability, edged weapons, § 1983, and Title II; see full discussion above.

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Bircoll v. Miami-Dade County, 480 F.3d 1072 (11th Cir. 2007) – Title II applies to police activity, with accommodation judged in light of the exigencies and practical circumstances of the encounter; see full discussion above.

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Seremeth v. Board of County Commissioners of Frederick County

Seremeth v. Board of County Commissioners of Frederick County, 673 F.3d 333 (4th Cir. 2012) – Title II applies to police investigations; exigent circumstances inform whether the accommodation was reasonable rather than categorically excluding Title II coverage; see full discussion above.

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Sheehan v. City & County of San Francisco, 743 F.3d 1211 (9th Cir. 2014), rev’d in part on other grounds

Sheehan v. City & County of San Francisco, 743 F.3d 1211 (9th Cir. 2014) – Title II applies to arrests and a jury could assess whether accommodation was reasonable where officers reentered a mentally ill woman’s room rather than waiting for backup; see full discussion above.

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City & County of San Francisco v. Sheehan

City & County of San Francisco v. Sheehan, 575 U.S. 600 (2015) – the Supreme Court dismissed the ADA question as improvidently granted after the city changed its litigation position, leaving unresolved whether Title II applies during arrest or exigency; see full discussion above.

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Haberle v. Troxell

Haberle v. Troxell, 885 F.3d 170 (3d Cir. 2018) – Title II can apply to police arrest activity; compensatory damages require deliberate indifference, not merely negligence; see full discussion above.

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Vos v. City of Newport Beach, 892 F.3d 1024 (9th Cir. 2018) – ADA and Rehabilitation Act claims may proceed independently of whether officers provoked the confrontation; factual questions about time, alternatives, and containment precluded summary judgment; see full discussion above.

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Haberle v. Borough of Nazareth

Haberle v. Borough of Nazareth, 936 F.3d 138 (3d Cir. 2019) – a municipal ADA damages claim can plausibly allege deliberate indifference based on failure to implement policies for people with serious mental illness, independently of a § 1983 excessive-force claim; see full discussion above.

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Winder v. Gallardo, No. 24-975, cert. denied June 23, 2025

Issue presented: Whether Title II applies during exigent police encounters or whether Hainze’s categorical Fifth Circuit exemption controls.

Supreme Court action: Certiorari denied.

Importance: Confirms that the circuit split remains unresolved.

Key caution: A certiorari denial is not precedent approving the Fifth Circuit rule.

What the Federal Rule Does Not Establish

The ADA and Section 504 do not establish that:

• police may never use force against a person with a disability;
• mental illness excuses an active knife assault;
• every failure to de-escalate is disability discrimination;
• officers must always wait for a crisis team;
• officers must always retreat;
• every deviation from CIT training violates federal disability law;
• a diagnosis automatically proves the need for a particular accommodation;
• a preferred accommodation is necessarily a reasonable accommodation;
• ADA liability automatically follows from excessive force;
• excessive force automatically proves ADA liability;
• violation of agency policy automatically violates the ADA;
• or exigent circumstances are irrelevant.

Policy Implications

Agency policy can reduce disability-related risk by establishing procedures for identifying disability information at dispatch, transmitting mental-health and communication information to responding officers, documenting known accommodation needs, distinguishing self-directed from other-directed threats, using interpreters or written communication where feasible, activating crisis teams, deploying negotiators, allowing caregiver or family communication, considering sensory factors, maintaining containment, involving supervisors, and reassessing before forced contact. Policies should also make clear that reasonable accommodation is circumstance-dependent and does not require officers to accept an immediate threat to themselves or others.

Research-Library Coding Implications

For ADA / Section 504 analysis, consider coding:

1. Disability alleged or documented

• mental illness
• intellectual/developmental
• autism
• hearing
• vision
• mobility
• neurological
• other
• none / indeterminate

2. Police knowledge before force

• confirmed
• reported by dispatch
• reported by family/third party
• apparent from behavior
• prior police knowledge
• unknown

3. Disability-related behavior identified

• yes
• no
• disputed
• indeterminate

4. Police purpose

• welfare check
• emergency aid
• criminal investigation
• arrest warrant
• service call
• mixed

5. Accommodation requested

• yes
• no
• impossible to determine

6. Accommodation proposed in litigation

• communication change
• wait/delay
• family/caregiver
• interpreter
• negotiator
• crisis team
• containment/distance
• transportation modification
• other

7. Immediate threat at time accommodation allegedly available

• yes
• no
• disputed
• evolving

8. Exigency doctrine applied

• Hainze categorical rule
• exigency-as-reasonableness factor
• not addressed

9. ADA theory

• wrongful arrest
• reasonable accommodation
• both
• other

10. Section 504 pleaded

• yes
• no

11. Federal funding established for §504

• yes
• no
• disputed / unknown

12. Damages standard

• deliberate indifference
• other intentional discrimination
• not reached

13. §1983 excessive-force outcome

• violation
• no violation
• qualified immunity
• unresolved

14. ADA / §504 outcome

• violation / liability
• triable issue
• dismissed
• not reached

This allows the Lab to test whether disability-law outcomes diverge from Fourth Amendment outcomes.

Research Questions

Potential empirical questions include:

• How often do fatal edged-weapon encounters involve documented disability?
• How often was the disability known before contact?
• How often did the initial threat remain self-directed?
• What accommodations were available before the threat became officer-directed?
• Do agencies with crisis-response policies show different encounter trajectories?
• How often are ADA or §504 claims pleaded alongside §1983?
• How often does qualified immunity dispose of §1983 while an entity-level disability claim survives?
• Are ADA claims more likely to survive where the subject was contained before force?
• How frequently do courts characterize exigency as eliminating versus merely limiting accommodation?

Relationship to Other Backgrounders

This Backgrounder should be read with:

• 42 U.S.C. § 1983
• Federal Constitutional Excessive-Force Standard
• Emergency Aid, Welfare Checks, and Warrantless Entry
• Officer-Created Jeopardy and Pre-Force Conduct
• Qualified Immunity
• Monell Liability
• Supervisory Liability
• Failure to Provide or Render Medical Aid Following Use of Force

Together they distinguish constitutional force liability, disability accommodation, entity liability, and remedies.

Research-Library Conclusion

Title II of the ADA and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act provide disability-discrimination theories that are legally distinct from § 1983 excessive-force claims. In police encounters, the strongest recurring theory is that a public entity failed to reasonably modify ordinary police practices for a person whose disability was known or apparent. The statutes do not immunize dangerous conduct and do not require officers to accept an immediate threat. Their greatest significance lies in the period before a crisis becomes immediately violent, where time, distance, communication, containment, or specialist resources may make disability-related accommodation feasible. The federal circuits remain divided over exigency: most treat danger as part of the reasonableness analysis, while the Fifth Circuit’s Hainze rule categorically suspends Title II until the scene is secure. The Supreme Court declined to resolve the issue in Sheehan and denied review in Winder v. Gallardo in 2025. For edged-weapon research, ADA and § 504 claims therefore offer a particularly important alternative lens: even where the final use of force is constitutionally reasonable, earlier failure to accommodate a known disability may remain a separate question of entity liability.

Not Legal Advice

This Backgrounder is for research and educational purposes. It summarizes federal disability law and selected appellate authorities. It is not legal advice and should not substitute for jurisdiction-specific legal research by qualified counsel.

References

Bircoll v. Miami-dade County (2007). 480 F.3d 1072.

Buchanan v. Maine (2006). 469 F.3d 158.

City & County Of San Francisco v. Sheehan (2015). 575 U.S. 600.

Gohier v. Enright (1999). 186 F.3d 1216.

Haberle v. Borough Of Nazareth (2019). 936 F.3d 138.

Haberle v. Troxell (2018). 885 F.3d 170.

Hainze v. Richards (2000). 207 F.3d 795.

Seremeth v. Board Of County Commissioners Of Frederick County (2012). 673 F.3d 333.

Vos v. City Of Newport Beach (2018). 892 F.3d 1024.

How to cite

Edged-Weapon Response Lab. (2026). ADA Title II and Section 504 as Alternative Theories in Police Use-of-Force Cases. In EWRL Law & Policy Analysis (Version 1.0). https://droptheknife.org/law-and-policy/ada_section504