RULING COULD CREATE MORE `CREATIVE' LAWSUITS

Among the latest rulings from the U.S. Supreme Court is word that state prison inmates are protected against discrimination by the Americans With Disabilities Act. Among those whose appeal was rebuffed were officials of 34 states who said the law has already led to unreasonable demands by prisoners.

"I expect a lot of creative litigation on the part of inmates," said Kent Scheidegger of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, which supported Pennsylvania officials' appeal. "We're now opening another floodgate."

Indeed. This is how it's done. Congress passes a law, even a well-intentioned law such as the ADA, to help disabled Americans and ease their path into the mainstream of American life. Little thought is given to all its potential implications, many of which, as we are now seeing, are incredibly far-reaching.

The law extends the all-powerful reach of the federal government into every state and local government in America. Inside America's state and federal prisons reside malefactors, some of them quite intelligent, who have little but time on their hands plus access to a law library. The books are at their disposal courtesy of another set of court decisions, by the way. Given time, and practice, some of the more enterprising inmates get pretty good at the business of writing creative legal complaints.

Writing the court's opinion was one of its most conservative and judicially restrained members, Justice Antonin Scalia. He held: "The statute's language unmistakably includes state prisons and prisoners within its coverage."

Don't blame the court. They're just interpreting a statute as written. Blame those current and former members of Congress who, in 1990, caved in to demands to pass a bill this far-reaching without fully considering all its implications.