## Facts

- Three law students who intended to apply for admission to the Texas Bar sued the Texas State Board of Law Examiners, seeking declaratory and injunctive relief on behalf of themselves and a putative class.
- Texas required bar applicants, as part of character-and-fitness review, to verify they were not “mentally ill,” and the Board’s application asked broad questions about mental-health history within the prior ten years.
- An affirmative response triggered enhanced scrutiny, including requests for treatment records and provider information and possible independent evaluation.
- During the litigation, the Board revised the application to narrow the mental-health questions to whether, within ten years, the applicant had been diagnosed with or treated for certain psychotic-spectrum disorders (including bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, paranoia, or other psychotic disorders) and whether those conditions resulted in inpatient treatment or hospitalization.
- After the revisions, none of the named plaintiffs would have answered “yes,” but they continued to challenge the revised questions under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
- The case proceeded to a bench trial in federal district court.

## Issues

1. Whether the Texas State Board of Law Examiners is a “public entity” subject to Title II of the ADA when administering bar admission and character-and-fitness procedures.
2. Whether the Board’s mental-health questions and resulting investigative practices unlawfully discriminate on the basis of disability or use impermissible screening criteria that tend to screen out individuals with mental disabilities.
3. Whether the controversy remained justiciable after the Board narrowed the challenged questions such that the named plaintiffs would not be subject to them.

## Decision

- The court treated the Board’s bar-admissions process as subject to Title II of the ADA.
- The court concluded that the earlier, broadly framed mental-health inquiry was inconsistent with the ADA to the extent it relied on diagnosis and treatment history rather than present, practice-relevant impairment.
- The court indicated that more limited inquiries focused on serious conditions and recent inpatient treatment could be legally defensible if connected to legitimate fitness concerns and implemented through individualized assessment rather than automatic adverse action.
- The Board’s mid-litigation revisions affected the court’s evaluation of ongoing relief and the scope of any remaining live dispute.

## Legal Principles

- State bar admission and licensing functions constitute governmental “services, programs, or activities” governed by ADA Title II.
- Licensing standards or questions that “screen out or tend to screen out” individuals with disabilities are unlawful unless justified by necessity tied to legitimate fitness objectives and applied through individualized assessment.
- Disability-related inquiries are more likely to violate the ADA when they are diagnosis-based, overinclusive, and trigger intrusive investigation absent evidence of functional limitation relevant to professional competence.
- Narrowly tailored questions may be permissible when limited to conditions with a concrete connection to fitness and administered without presumptions that a mental-health history alone establishes unfitness.

## Conclusion

The court applied ADA Title II to Texas bar admissions and rejected sweeping, diagnosis-driven mental-health screening that was not tied to individualized evidence of current impairment, while leaving room for narrowly targeted inquiries closely connected to legitimate fitness concerns and implemented through individualized evaluation.


Applicants v. Tex. State Bd. of Law Exam’rs, No. A-93-CA-740-SS, 1994 WL 923404 (W.D. Tex. 1994)