Cite as: 527 U. S. 555 (1999)
Opinion of the Court
of "substantially limits" cited by the Ninth Circuit requires a "significant restrict[ion]" in an individual's manner of performing a major life activity, the court appeared willing to settle for a mere difference. By transforming "significant restriction" into "difference," the court undercut the fundamental statutory requirement that only impairments causing "substantial limitat[ions]" in individuals' ability to perform major life activities constitute disabilities. While the Act "addresses substantial limitations on major life activities, not utter inabilities," Bragdon v. Abbott, 524 U. S. 624, 641 (1998), it concerns itself only with limitations that are in fact substantial.
Second, the Ninth Circuit appeared to suggest that in gauging whether a monocular individual has a disability a court need not take account of the individual's ability to compensate for the impairment. The court acknowledged that Kirkingburg's "brain has developed subconscious mechanisms for coping with [his] visual impairment and thus his body compensates for his disability." 143 F. 3d, at 1232. But in treating monocularity as itself sufficient to establish disability and in embracing Doane, the Ninth Circuit apparently adopted the view that whether "the individual had learned to compensate for the disability by making subconscious adjustments to the manner in which he sensed depth and perceived peripheral objects," 143 F. 3d, at 1232, was irrelevant to the determination of disability. See, e. g., Sutton v. United Air Lines, Inc., 130 F. 3d 893, 901, n. 7 (CA10 1997) (characterizing Doane as standing for the proposition that mitigating measures should be disregarded in assessing disability); EEOC v. Union Pacific R. Co., 6 F. Supp. 2d 1135, 1137 (Idaho 1998) (same). We have just held, however, in Sutton v. United Airlines, Inc., ante, at 482, that mitigating measures must be taken into account in judging whether an individual possesses a disability. We see no principled basis for distinguishing between measures undertaken with artificial aids, like medications and devices, and
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