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.