Chevron v. Echazabal

The United States Supreme Court decided the case of Chevron v. Echazabal, 536 U.S. 73 (2002) on June 10, 2002, holding that the Americans with Disabilities Act permits an employer to exclude a person with a disability from employment because that person poses a direct threat to his or her own health or safety.

Mario Echazabal had worked at a Chevron oil refinery for 17 years, primarily at its coker unit, as an employee of various contractors. In 1992 he applied for a job working directly for Chevron at the coker unit. The company offered him the job contingent on the results of a physical exam. The company doctor, however, declared Echazabal unfit for the job because blood tests showed that toxic substances in the refinery might pose a risk to his liver. Nonetheless, Echazabal was permitted to continue working in the coker unit as employee of Chevron's contractor. He sought treatment and was ultimately diagnosed with Hepatitis C. In 1995 he again applied for a job at Chevron, and again was turned down on the basis of the company doctor's conclusion that exposure to toxins at the unit "could be fatal." This time the company directed the contractor who employed Echazabal to take him out of that position, which it did in 1996. In 1997 he filed suit, charging that Chevron's actions violated the ADA. He presented testimony by physicians expert in liver disease (which Chevron's doctors were not) that working at the factory would not, in fact, put him at any greater risk than any other employee.

The district court refused to consider the experts' testimony, however, because it was not presented prior to Echazabal's firing. He appealed, and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that an employer may not exclude individuals with disabilities based on threats to their own health or safety. Chevron then asked the Supreme Court to reverse that ruling.

This case was of great concern to individuals with disabilities. Congress made clear in the ADA that, while posing "direct threat to the health or safety of other individuals" may disqualify a person with a disability from employment, an employer may not exclude a worker based on possible risks to the worker's own health or safety. We believe that the decision whether to maintain employment that may pose such risks is one that the worker, not the employer, must make. Moreover, permitting employers to exclude workers based on concerns about the workers' own health or safety would result in exclusions of individuals with disabilities based on paternalistic impulses and unfounded assumptions about their health and safety.

Amicus Briefs

The Bazelon Center played a central role in organizing and coordinating the following amicus (friend of the court) briefs to the Supreme Court on behalf of Mario Echazabal.

Please note: many of these briefs are in PDF file format; you will need the free Acrobat Reader to view and print them. Text or HTML versions are available by request.

The brief of 22 national organizations* representing people with various types of disability. As such, they "are intimately familiar with the role that paternalism has played in the lives of people with disabilities." They express concern that affirmation of "Chevron's protectionist arguments" would support limitation in other contexts of "the ability of people with disabilities to be full, participating members of their communities, contrary to the primary goal of the ADA." In addition to supporting the respondent's arguments that "threat to self" does not justify exclusion, the brief argues that to lower the standard for evaluating any medical judgments related to an employee's qualifications to perform a job, as proposed by Chevron and its amici, "would frustrate the purposes of the ADA" by giving an employer's doctors "virtually unreviewable discretion to exclude individuals with disabilities from the workplace."

* The 22 organizations are: American Association of People with Disabilities, AARP, American Council of the Blind, American Diabetes Association, ADAPT, Brain Injury Association of America, Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, Epilepsy Foundation, HalfthePlanet Foundation, Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, Legal Aid Society--Employment Law Center, National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, National Association of the Deaf Law Center, National Association of Developmental Disabilities Councils, National Association of Protection and Advocacy Systems, National Association of Rights Protection and Advocacy, National Council on Independent Living, National Mental Health Association, National Mental Health Consumers' Self-Help Clearinghouse, Polio Society, The Arc of the United States and United Cerebral Palsy Association.

The brief of the National Council on Disability on the basis of NCD's deep understanding of the ADA's origins, purpose and implementation. NCD is an independent federal agency whose members are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. It was instrumental in creating the legislative record that Congress considered in enacting the ADA and has monitored its implementation over two decades. Reversing the circuit court's ruling, NCD contends, would endorse "the assumption that people with disabilities are not competent to make informed, wise, or safe life choices," which is "the most long-standing and insidious aspect" of the discrimination that is banned by the ADA. In passing the ADA, the brief points out, Congress replaced the "medical model" focusing on an individual's infirmity with the civil rights model it had applied to African Americans and women. Under the ADA, "health and safety concerns are reviewed in the context of employer defenses" (especially as regards danger to other employees) and "are not an appropriate part of the analysis of whether a person is a 'qualified individual with a disability.'"

The American Civil Liberties Union's brief reviews the history of paternalism as exclusionary, illustrated by historic cases supporting school segregation as benefiting African American students and restricting women's access to the workplace "to protect them from the rigors of manual labor." Rejecting such paternalistic rules in recent decades, courts "have increasingly recognized that a central part of implementing civil rights protections is ensuring that individuals can decide whether they themselves will take on a given social or physical risk, rather than having such decisions made for them based on their race, sex, disability or other protected criteria." Further, Chevron's argument that "it has not discriminated against Echazabal because the decision was not based on stereotype" is irrelevant, the ACLU writes, because, as the Supreme Court has held in other cases, "civil rights laws prohibit all discrimination, not just that based on stereotypes."

The brief by six public health-policy organizations offer expertise in workplace safety standards, especially regarding requirements of individuals with Hepatitis C. They argue that exclusion of a currently qualified individual with a disability on the basis of threat to self "does nothing to advance worker safety or public health policy." To the contrary, allowing such exclusion "undercuts employer incentives to improve workplace safety for all employees, and is at odds with the ADA and federal and state [Occupational Health and Safety Administration] guidelines." The brief cites expert testimony below and federal guidelines establishing that "if chemicals in Chevron's refinery pose a threat to Echazabal, they pose a threat to all workers." Accordingly, "protection of Echazabal and other workers is accomplished best through reduction of workplace hazards and use of protective equipment, not through their exclusion from the workplace." In addition, Chevron's reliance on its own doctors to evaluate the risk to Echazabal is "far afield of what the ADA and the courts interpreting it have required."

* The six organizations are American Public Health Association, American Association for the Study of Liver Disease, Hepatitis C Action and Advocacy Coalition, Hepatitis C Association, Hepatitis C Outreach Project, and Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, Inc.

The National Employment Lawyers Association brief reminds the court that Echazabal had already demonstrated that he is "a qualified individual" because he had performed the same type of work in the same setting for more than two decades. Under the ADA, the NELA brief argues, the burden of proof of "direct threat" is on the employer; it cannot be shifted to the employee to prove that he is not a direct threat to his own safety in order to qualify for the position in question. Addressing the underlying reason for Chevron's exclusion of Mario Echazabal, the brief points to a federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission guidance stating that under the ADA "an employer may not refuse to hire an individual with a disability because it assumes--correctly or incorrectly--that the individual poses an increased risk of occupational injuries and workers' compensation costs." The brief also challenges Chevron's asserted fears about escalating workers compensation costs and criminal sanctions for putting workers with disabilities at risk. It explains the role of "second injury" funds in limiting employers' liability when a worker's disability is exacerbated by a work-related injury. It also reviews the types of "morally repugnant conduct" that can lead to criminal sanctions against employers, noting that these are "a far cry from a situation where an employer discloses any potential health risks" and then "permits the employee to choose whether or not to accept them."