Dive Brief:
- Union Pacific Railroad Co. did not violate the Americans with Disabilities Act when it restricted a conductor from driving a train after he recovered from a stroke because the job was “safety sensitive,” and it properly determined that letting him return would pose a “direct threat” to safety, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held Tuesday.
- Per the ruling in Christensen v. Union Pacific Railroad Co., the conductor suffered an ischemic stroke at home while off duty. Medication he took afterwards caused minor bleeding in his brain, but he recovered well, and his neurologist cleared him to return to work, according to court documents. However, based on his medical records, Union Pacific’s chief medical officer decided to restrict him from driving a train for a year.
- Near the end of that year, a Union Pacific physician again reviewed the conductor’s medical records, including that he hadn’t suffered any neurological events since the stroke, documents reflected. The physician also reviewed updated scientific evidence and Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration guidelines and determined the conductor should be subject to a five-year restriction, according to the court record. The conductor never returned to work and later sued Union Pacific for violating the ADA.
Dive Insight:
The 8th Circuit upheld summary judgment for Union Pacific. It agreed with the district court that Union Pacific “conclusively established” the conductor’s stroke and brain hemorrhage “resulted in a heightened risk of seizures and his return would present a direct threat to safety.”
Attorneys for the conductor did not respond to a request for comment.
Under the ADA, an employer can defend restricting an employee because of a disability if it shows the disability posed a direct threat, or “significant risk to the health and safety of others that cannot be eliminated by reasonable accommodation,” the 8th Circuit said.
Union Pacific met its burden, the court held: It conducted an individual assessment that included multiple rounds of fitness-for-duty evaluations involving a comprehensive review of the conductor’s medical records, condition and job duties. Then, based on this assessment, the most current medical knowledge and the FMCSA’s guidelines, Union Pacific made an “objectively reasonable” decision to restrict the conductor from returning to his job, the panel explained.
While a reasonable jury could find Union Pacific misjudged the safety risk because the conductor’s treating physician cleared him to safely return to work, there was nothing in the record that would allow a jury to conclude the railway’s “judgment was so off-base as to be objectively unreasonable,” the 8th Circuit said.
In a 2022 ruling, the 3rd Circuit found — similar to the 8th Circuit here — that Norfolk Southern Railway Co. properly considered the direct threat risk factors set out in the ADA regulations before deciding that a locomotive engineer posed a direct threat to safety because his heart condition put him at risk for loss of consciousness.
In this case, the 8th Circuit said Union Pacific properly determined that while the conductor’s “increased risk for seizure might have been relatively low, the nature and severity of the potential harm if a seizure occurred on the job ‘was extreme,’ and the threat of a seizure is ‘imminent’ by nature.”
