Disabled’s Right to Jobs Narrowed

Employers may reject qualified job applicants because of their disabilities if the post they seek poses a serious threat to their health or safety, the Supreme Court ruled Monday in the case of a Los Angeles-area oil refinery worker.

It has been clear, under the law, that companies can refuse to hire disabled people for a job where their limitations could pose a safety risk to others, such as co-workers.

The high court went a step further Monday and said workers can be turned away if their disabilities represent a threat to themselves.

The 9-0 ruling further narrows the Americans with Disabilities Act, the 1990 measure that outlawed job discrimination against qualified workers who had physical or mental impairments.

Despite the ban on job bias, employers need not hire someone for a job that “would endanger his own health, owing to a disability,” the court said.

Monday’s decision is the seventh in the past four years to interpret the job bias portions of this law. All seven have resulted in victories for employers and defeats for the workers claiming a disability.

Advocates for the disabled feared the latest decision could encourage employers to reject job applicants with all manner of disabilities, including heart conditions or those with HIV.

“We thought Congress had rejected this kind of paternalism when it passed” the disabilities act, said Ira Burnim of the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, a disability-rights group.

“This allows the employer to say we know what’s best for you,” said James Esseks, an ACLU lawyer who filed a brief supporting the oil refinery worker. “Think of an example that seems absurd today. A company says to a person in a wheelchair, ‘You can’t work in a skyscraper because it would be dangerous to you if there was a fire.’ This [ruling] represents a version of that.”

But corporate lawyers hailed the decision, saying it would put safety and common sense first. They cited worst-case examples of their own, such as the high-rise steelworker who suffers from vertigo.

“If employers were told they could not consider the [worker’s] risk to self, they would have been in a terrible quandary,” said Stephen M. Shapiro, a Chicago lawyer who represented Chevron USA, the employer in this case. “They could be faced with hiring people who they know would die on the job. And they would also be exposed to all sorts of litigation.”

The case of Chevron vs. Echazabal, 00-1406, reached the Supreme Court six years after the oil giant had dismissed Mario Echazabal from his job at the El Segundo refinery near Los Angeles International Airport.

He had worked there since 1972 in a series of maintenance jobs for a private contractor. When he applied for a full-time job with Chevron, the plant’s doctor said he had hepatitis C, a liver infection. This condition could be aggravated by the toxic chemicals at the refinery, the company said, and he was let go.

Echazabal sued, alleging he was unfairly discriminated against because of a disability. He also said his health was good and that he was capable of doing the job.

U.S. District Judge Lourdes Baird in Los Angeles sided with Chevron and threw out his lawsuit.

But the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, on a 2-1 vote, revived his claim. Judge Stephen Reinhardt noted that the disabilities law says employers can refuse to hire people who pose “a direct threat to the health or safety of others.”

It does not say employers can refuse to hire disabled persons because the job is a threat to their own health.

Bush administration lawyers joined the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Assn. of Manufacturers in urging the court to reverse that ruling.

Ruling Is Unanimous

Justice David H. Souter, writing the unanimous court decision, said the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which enforces anti-bias law, has long maintained businesses may reject disabled applicants for jobs that would be a threat to their own health and safety.

He added that employers cannot use broad “stereotypes” to reject disabled applicants. Their decisions must be based on “a reasonable medical judgment ... of the individual’s present ability to safely perform the essential functions of the job.”

The ruling does not necessarily resolve Echazabal’s lawsuit.

While Chevron’s doctors said he should not work at the refinery, he had two medical experts, including a liver specialist at UCLA Medical Center, who said the workplace would not be dangerous for him.

A judge or a jury in Los Angeles may have to resolve this factual dispute. Lawyers for Echazabal say they plan to continue to press his case.

Echazabal, 56, is working part-time as a school bus driver, said his lawyer, Larry Minsky of Cerritos.

Disability-rights advocates said they were disappointed but not surprised by Monday’s ruling.

“There is a pretty clear trend in ... employment cases” stemming from the disabilities act, said Harvard Law School professor Samuel Bagenstos, who argued the case on behalf of Echazabal. “The court consistently rules in favor of employers.”

When Congress passed the act in 1990, it was signed into law by then-President George Bush and hailed as a promise of equal treatment for the tens of millions who had physical or mental disabilities.

But the Supreme Court has narrowed the reach of the law and limited its benefits.

For instance, earlier this year the court ruled that workers with crippling workplace injuries such as carpal tunnel syndrome are not disabled persons entitled to protection under the law.

And last month, the court said that a disabled worker is not entitled to claim another, less taxing job if it means replacing a worker with more seniority.