Labour & Employment Legal Update - Special Edition

Supreme Court Rules That ADA Permits Employers to Deny Job to Disabled

On June

10, 2002, the United States Supreme Court, in an unanimous decision, ruled that

the Americans with Disabilities Act (the "ADA" or the

"Act") allows an employer to screen out potential employees with

disabilities who pose a risk on the job to their own health or safety. In Chevron

U.S.A., Inc. v. Echazabal,1 the plaintiff, Mario Echazabal,

began working in 1972 for independent contractors at an oil refinery owned by

Chevron. In the early 1990's Echazabal twice applied for a position directly

with Chevron, and, each time, Chevron made a job offer to Echazabal, contingent

on his ability to pass a physical. Chevron subsequently withdrew each of the

job offers after Echazabal's physicals revealed a liver abnormality, later

identified to have resulted from Echazabal's contraction of Hepatitis C.

Chevron withdrew its job offers based on statements made by company physicians

that Echazabal's condition would be aggravated by exposure to toxins at the Chevron

refinery.

Following

the withdrawal of its second job offer to Echazabal, Chevron asked the

contractor that employed him to reassign Echazabal to a position without

exposure to toxins, or to remove him from the refinery entirely. The contractor

laid Echazabal off in 1996.

Echazabal

sued Chevron under the ADA, claiming that the company refused to hire him and

refused to allow him to continue working for the contractors because of his

disability in violation of the Act. For its defense, Chevron asserted that the

EEOC regulations interpreting the ADA permitted an employer to deny employment

to a qualified individual with a disability who would pose a "direct

threat" to his own health if he were hired.2

Echazabal

argued that the EEOC "threat to self" regulation relied upon by

Chevron impermissibly exceeded the scope of the ADA. Specifically, Echazabal

contended that the Act creates an affirmative defense where an applicant is

denied a position because he cannot meet a qualification standard that is

"job-related" and "consistent with business necessity."3

Under the ADA, such a qualification standard may include "a requirement

that an individual shall not pose a direct threat to the health or safety of other

individuals in the workplace," if the applicant or employee cannot

perform the job safely with reasonable accommodation.4 Echazabal

argued that the EEOC, through its regulations, impermissibly expanded the

qualification standard to include "a requirement that an individual shall

not pose a direct threat to the health or safety of the individual or others

in the workplace."5

Essentially,

Echazabal asserted that because he did not pose a threat to others, but only to

himself, the employer should not be entitled to the defense, and should not be

permitted to exclude him from the workplace because of his disability. The

Supreme Court disagreed.

The Court

held that, because the ADA states that qualification standards falling within

the limits of job relation and business necessity "may include" the

denial of positions to persons who would pose a direct threat to

"others," the statutory language is broad enough to permit the denial

of employment to individuals who pose a threat to themselves only.6

The Court

concluded that Echazabal's narrow reading of the statute would unnecessarily

limit the number of persons whose safety could be considered to only

"others" who were "in the workplace." This was not, the

Court reasoned, what Congress intended. The Court theorized, "When Congress

specified threats to others in the...