Dive Brief:
- A former employee of Chicago’s Metra commuter rail service failed to show that the organization violated the Americans with Disabilities Act when it suspended him for a failed drug test that allegedly detected medications used to treat migraines, wrist pain and attention deficit disorder, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held Thursday.
- The plaintiff in Hoffstead v. Northeast Illinois Regional Commuter Railroad Corp. tested positive for amphetamines and opioids during a mandatory random drug test. A medical review officer attempted to contact the plaintiff three times over a 48-hour period but failed to get in touch with him, ultimately leading to a suspension, the court said.
- When confronted about the result, the plaintiff signed an agreement to participate in a mandatory rehabilitation and education program and waived his right to an investigation. He was not considered for an identical job opening at Metra despite his attempts to exercise seniority rights to obtain the position. A district court granted summary judgment to Metra and the 7th Circuit affirmed.
Dive Insight:
The 7th Circuit determined that the plaintiff in Hoffstead could not demonstrate that disability was the “but for” reason upon which Metra relied when taking adverse employment actions against him.
Specifically, the court noted that the plaintiff was removed because of his failure to respond to the review officer within 48 hours of his test-result analysis, not because of his diagnoses or positive test results. As a result, the officer reported the positive test results to Metra, the 7th Circuit said, leading to the plaintiff’s subsequent suspension.
The plaintiff countered by stating that he self-reported his prescription drug list to Metra via an “On-Duty Use of Medication Form” prior to his test. But the court wrote that “self-reporting medications before a positive drug test is not a substitute for providing proof of prescriptions after a positive test. Indeed, such self-reports are not evidence of a valid prescription at the time of the positive test.”
Hoffstead bears some similarities to a 2019 decision in the neighboring 8th Circuit, Voss v. Housing Authority of the City of Magnolia, Arkansas. In Voss, the 8th Circuit held that a supervisor’s knowledge that an employee was taking a prescription drug was not sufficient to show that the employer regarded the employee as having a disability, nor did a suspension given in response to a positive drug test allegedly triggered by the employee’s prescription constitute an adverse employment decision.
In another case, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed a 2022 lawsuit against International Paper Co. alleging that the company violated the ADA when it revoked a conditional job offer to an applicant diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. EEOC claimed that the applicant, who had been prescribed Adderall, tested positive for amphetamines during a post-offer drug screening. International Paper agreed to settle the case for $65,000.
