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On 12/2/03, the Supreme Court decided 7 to 0 that an employer may, without violating the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”), maintain a policy against rehiring former employees terminated for violating workplace conduct rules, such as testing positive for cocaine. The Ninth Circuit had held that such a policy “violates the ADA, as applied to employees with the disability of drug addiction whose only work-related offense was testing positive for drug use but are now rehabilitated.” The Supreme Court ruled that the company's "no-hire policy is a quintessential legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason for refusing to rehire an employee who was terminated for violating workplace conduct rules." The policy was litigated under a disparate treatment analysis. As long as the employer could show a legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason for the refusal to hire, and the employee could not show that the decision was actually made on the basis of his disability, the employer wins. Unresolved was whether the employee would win under a disparate impact theory -- that is, whether the employer's no-hire policy falls more harshly on people protected by the ADA than on others. This theory was not raised in a timely manner in the litigation.