The Supreme Court ruled 9-0 on 6/10/02 to uphold an EEOC regulation permitting an employer to defend against an ADA claim by showing that the worker’s disability on the job would prose a direct threat to his, rather than a co-worker’s, health. This means that an individual with a disability cannot use the ADA to require an employer to provide a reasonable accommodation to work in a location that may be hazardous to him. Instead, the employer can refuse to put the person in harm’s way.Two points are clear from the Court’s ruling. First, the EEOC has the authority to fill in gaps that Congress left in the statute when the ADA was passed. In this case, the EEOC properly interpreted a broadly worded employer defense to include situations that are hazardous to the affected employee himself.
Second, the Court recognized that employers are in a very difficult position when trying to comply with the employee accommodation requirements of the ADA and the safety and health requirements of the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSH Act). It found that the EEOC could reasonably resolve this conflict by refusing to hold the employer liable for acting to protect employees from hazards that the employees themselves are willing to risk.
This decision is an important victory for all companies subject to the ADA. It gives employers a path with some breathing room between government demands for maximum workplace safety and competing demands by employees who are willing to risk their lives on jobs that others can do more safely. It highlights a fundamental question that will continue to cause conflict. To what degree are we willing to sacrifice an individual’s need for a job to prevent injuries to that person in the workplace?
This will not open the floodgates for companies to refuse to hire individuals based on broad types of conditions. Companies must make individual determinations in each case to conclude that a particular workplace is not suitable for a particular employee’s condition. They must consider reasonable medical judgments based on “the most current medical assessment of the individual’s present ability to safely perform the essential functions of the job," and must consider "the imminence of the risk and the severity of the harm portended." Thus, there will continue to be cases where these choices are evaluated by the courts.