Cite as: 527 U. S. 471 (1999)
Stevens, J., dissenting
conditions. Viewing a person in her "unmitigated" state simply requires examining that individual's abilities in a different state, not the abilities of every person who shares a similar condition. It is just as easy individually to test petitioners' eyesight with their glasses on as with their glasses off.5
Ironically, it is the Court's approach that actually condones treating individuals merely as members of groups. That misdirected approach permits any employer to dismiss out of hand every person who has uncorrected eyesight worse than 20/100 without regard to the specific qualifications of those individuals or the extent of their abilities to overcome their impairment. In much the same way, the Court's approach would seem to allow an employer to refuse to hire every person who has epilepsy or diabetes that is controlled by medication, or every person who functions efficiently with a prosthetic limb.
Under the Court's reasoning, an employer apparently could not refuse to hire persons with these impairments who are substantially limited even with medication, see ante, at 487-488, but that group-based "exception" is more perverse still. Since the purpose of the ADA is to dismantle employment barriers based on society's accumulated myths
5 For much the same reason, the Court's concern that the agencies' approach would "lead to the anomalous result" that courts would ignore "negative side effects suffered by an individual resulting from the use of mitigating measures," ante, at 484, is misplaced. It seems safe to assume that most individuals who take medication that itself substantially limits a major life activity would be substantially limited in some other way if they did not take the medication. The Court's examples of psychosis, Parkinson's disease, and epilepsy certainly support this presumption. To the extent that certain people may be substantially limited only when taking "mitigating measures," it might fairly be said that just as contagiousness is symptomatic of a disability because an individual's "contagiousness and her physical impairment each [may result] from the same underlying condition," School Bd. of Nassau Cty. v. Arline, 480 U. S. 273, 282 (1987), side effects are symptomatic of a disability because side effects and a physical impairment may flow from the same underlying condition.
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