Ninth Circuit Holds "One-Strike" Drug Testing Rule Does Not Violate ADA
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday held in Lopez v. Pacific Maritime Association that an employer’s one-strike drug testing policy for applicants does not violate the Americans With Disabilities Act (“ADA”). The one-strike policy in question stated that the company would never hire any applicant who tested positive on a pre-employment drug screening. All applicants were given notice of the test seven days in advance. The plaintiff failed his test when he first applied in 1997. At the time he suffered from an addiction to drugs and alcohol. He re-applied in 2002, and was rejected based solely on his prior positive test. At that time the employer was unaware of plaintiff’s earlier addiction.
The plaintiff filed suit, alleging disparate treatment and disparate impact violations of the ADA based on his protected status as a rehabilitated drug addict. The trial court granted the employer’s motion for summary judgment, and the Ninth Circuit affirmed. The court dispensed with plaintiff’s disparate treatment arguments on the grounds that the rule, while arguably unreasonably harsh, was neutral, in that it “eliminates all candidates who test positive for drug use, whether they test positive because of a disabling drug addiction or because of an untimely decision to try drugs for the first time, recreationally, on the day before the drug test.” Citing the Supreme Court’s decision in Raytheon v. Hernandez, the court noted that “[t]he ADA prohibits employment decisions made because of a person’s qualifying disability, not decisions made because of factors merely related to a person’s disability.”
The Court also rejected plaintiff’s disparate impact argument, on the ground that he failed to produce evidence from which a juror could conclude that “the one-strike rule results in fewer recovered drug addicts in Defendant’s employ, as compared to the number of qualified recovered drug addicts in the relevant labor market.”
While this case does present something of a win for employers with similarly neutral policies, I would caution employers from getting too excited for two reasons. First, the Court hinted that summary judgment may not have been appropriate had the employer known of the plaintiff’s addiction before he reapplied. Second, plaintiff’s disparate impact claim failed only because he could not produce any evidence of disparate impact. The Court made clear that to survive summary judgment he’d only have to produce “some” evidence—a very low threshold indeed.
Supreme Court: Disparate Impact Plaintiffs Can Sue Based on the Application of the Discriminatory Practice
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The Supreme Court today issued a judicial smackdown to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, unanimously reversing its decision in Lewis v. City of Chicago (as we suggested it should when we reviewed the details of this case back in October!). Briefly put, the plaintiffs are a group of approximately 6,000 black firefighter applicants who filed charges of race discrimination with the EEOC more than 300 days after the initial announcement of their application test results, but within 300 days of the hiring of the new firefighter class from which they allege they were denied consideration. The Seventh Circuit held that the “discrimination was complete when the tests were scored...and the applicants learned the results.”
Justice Scalia, writing for the entire Court, stated that because there is no dispute that the claim was filed within 300 days of the hiring of the new class, the issue in this case is not “whether a claim predicated on the [on the hiring of the new firefighter class] is timely, but whether the practice thus defined can be the basis for a disparate-impact claim at all.” (Emphasis in original.) In other words, while the parties agreed that the adoption of a practice had a disparate impact, the real question was whether a cause of action can arise from the application of that same practice. The Court held that it could. Citing its recent opinion in another firefighter test case—Ricci v. DeStefano, the court noted that “a plaintiff establishes a prima facie disparate-impact claim by showing that the employer ‘uses a particular employment practice that causes a disparate impact’ on one of the prohibited bases.”
Per the Court, the City believes that this decision “will result in a host of practical problems for employers and employees alike,” in that it may subject employers to an increased number of disparate-impact lawsuits based on long-stranding practices. That may, in fact, be true. Following this decision, any employer engaging in a practice whose application may result in a disparate impact on some protected classification of employees should take the time to reevaluate that practice. While there may be a legitimate business defense for the practice (as remains to be seen in the Lewis case on remand), it’s going to be easier for employees to get their foot in the door and state a claim.
Ricci v. DeStefano -- Supreme Court Holds City Violated Title VII By Rejecting Racially Disparate Test Results
To end its term, the Supreme Court today issued its long awaited opinion in Ricci v. DeStefano--a case that has received extra media attention because Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor was on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals panel that decided the case below. The conservative justices on the Court reversed the Second Circuit (and by extension, Judge Sotomayor) in a 5-4 decision, ruling that the city of New Haven violated Title VII by discarding the results of a firefighter promotion test where white applicants fared disproportionately better than other applicants. As one might expect, Justice Kennedy provided the swing vote and authored the majority opinion.
New Haven used the test in question to identify firefighters best qualified for promotion. Despite being objectively administered, the test's racially disproportionate results led the city to question whether it should validate the results. The city, of course, found itself in a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" position: certify the test results, and face Title VII disparate impact litigation from minority applicants; fail to certify them, and face Title VII reverse discrimination litigation from the white officers who passed but were denied a promotion. The city opted for the latter course, and, as expected, the white firefighters filed a reverse discrimination lawsuit. The city prevailed on summary judgment at the district court level, and the Second Circuit affirmed.
The Supreme Court found that discarding the tests violated Title VII , while certifying the test would not have been a violation of law because there was no "strong basis in evidence" for believing that the black firefighters would prevail on a disparate impact claim. The court noted that despite what otherwise would have constituted a "prima facie" showing of disparate impact race discrimination, several defenses were available to the city--namely that the exam at issue was job related, consistent with business necessity, and there existed no equally valid, less discriminatory alternative that suited the city's needs but was not adopted. The four dissenting justices disagreed, arguing that the majority's analysis was flawed because "New Haven had ample cause to believe its selection process was flawed and not justified by business necessity."
Ultimately, the Ricci decision will have little to no impact on most employers, but represents a small victory for employers (despite the positioning here that held against the city/employer). Employers can now take a somewhat more confident stand in backing test results that may demonstrate some disparate impact, so long as the test was objective and no other less discriminatory alternative exists. The Ricci decision may not last for long, however. Political condemnation by Democrats has been swift, with Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) saying that "it is less likely now that employers will conscientiously try to fulfill their obligations under this time-honored civil rights law. This is a cramped decision that threatens to erode these protections and to harm the efforts of state and local governments that want to build the most qualified workforces." Don't be surprised if Congress passes legislation down the road aimed at upending the Ricci decision.
