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High court: Worker health before rights
By Washington Post WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court ruled Monday that employers may refuse to hire a disabled worker when the company determines the job would threaten the worker's life or health, the latest in a series of recent decisions by the court limiting the impact of the Americans With Disabilities Act in the workplace. Chevron, the company in question, had refused to give a job in the coker unit of its El Segundo, Calif., oil refinery to Mario Echazabal, who has hepatitis C, a chronic liver disease, based on its view that airborne toxins in the plant would make his liver worse and could kill him. Echazabal insisted that he was the best judge of the risk to himself, and he sued Chevron for job discrimination under the ADA. A federal appeals court had ruled in Echazabal's favor, but the Supreme Court voted 9-0 to side with the company, holding that Echazabal's claim was barred by an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission regulation that was, in turn, based on a reasonable interpretation of the disabilities act. "Chevron's reasons for calling the regulation reasonable are unsurprising," Justice David Souter wrote in the opinion for the court. "Moral concerns aside, it wishes to avoid time lost to sickness, excessive turnover from medical retirement or death, litigation under state tort law and the risk of violating" federal occupational-safety laws. Business groups hailed the ruling, which was the third time since the court's current term began in October that the justices had sided with a company in an ADA employment discrimination case. The Bush administration had also backed the company. "This was a victory for common sense," said Ann Elizabeth Reesman, general counsel of the Equal Employment Advisory Council, a business group. "It was pretty clear the court thought so, too. When you get a 9-0 decision, written by Souter, who is normally on the liberal side when the court divides, that means they are all of the same mind on this issue." But disability rights advocates said the court had accepted a paternalistic view of the company-worker relationship that runs counter to the letter and spirit of the ADA. They had argued that the text of the statute permits companies to deny work only to those who would pose a "direct threat" to others and that the EEOC regulations had distorted the intent of the law's drafters. "This is obviously a court that is not reading the ADA as expansively as people in the disability community would like or as major supporters in Congress thought it would be read, and this case is just another example of that," said Sam Bagenstos, a professor at Harvard Law School who represented Echazabal before the court. Earlier this term, the court, also by a vote of 9-0, held that the ADA, which defines disability as an impairment that limits "major life activities," does not protect workers with conditions such as carpal tunnel syndrome that might hinder them on an assembly line but not in other tasks "central" to life. By a 5-4 vote, the justices ruled that private-company seniority plans normally trump the ADA when it comes to finding jobs to accommodate disabled employees. The Supreme Court also took the following action Monday: SEX OFFENDERS: States may withhold television and other privileges from convicted sex offenders who won't admit their wrongdoing to counselors, a divided Supreme Court ruled Monday. The 5-4 ruling gives states the go-ahead to copy Kansas' aggressive prison rehabilitation program. Sex offenders who won't cooperate are put in maximum security, with restrictions on everything from visitors to gym privileges. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority, called the Kansas effort a "sensible approach to reducing the serious danger that repeat offenders pose to many innocent persons, most often children." The dissenting justices said Kansas was trampling inmates' Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination. CREDIT CARD RULES: The Supreme Court refused Monday to stop a multibillion-dollar battle over credit card rules, a defeat for Visa and MasterCard. Justices passed up a chance to rewrite rules for class-action lawsuits. Their refusal means no protection for the credit card companies from a suit that pits them against 4-million merchants that accept the credit cards. Chains like Wal-Mart, Sears and Circuit City joined smaller stores in suing Visa USA Inc. and MasterCard International Inc., accusing the companies of having a monopoly in credit cards and trying to extend that dominance to debit cards. The stores say that excessive transaction fees are being charged for the debit card clearing process. The retailers were given class-action status in 2000, and the credit card companies challenged that. CONSUMER PRIVACY: One of the nation's largest credit reporting firms lost a Supreme Court appeal Monday testing limits on how credit agencies can use information and the rights of consumers to keep some details private. The case was an appeal from Trans Union LLC, one of the nation's three largest credit reporting firms. The company claims its free-speech rights are violated by the Federal Trade Commission's interpretation of a federal law limiting some sale of consumer information. Trans Union lost a 10-year battle with the FTC over the issue, culminating in a federal appeals court decision against the company. Trans Union appealed to the Supreme Court. GUN RIGHTS: The Supreme Court said Monday it will not hear two cases that would have tested the Bush administration's newly articulated position that the Constitution protects an individual's right to own guns. Without comment, the court turned down two men convicted of violating federal gun laws. The men had argued that the laws are unconstitutional because the Second Amendment gives Americans the right to "keep and bear arms." The cases marked the first time that the Bush administration had told the Supreme Court that it has reversed a decades-old policy on the Second Amendment. Until now, the government has said the amendment protects a collective, not an individual, right to gun ownership. The distinction is important, because gun laws necessarily restrict individual rights. -- Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.
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