Opinion ID: 613990
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Plaintiff's Disparate Treatment Claim

Text: In support of his disparate treatment claim, Plaintiff makes three arguments. He first argues that the one-strike rule facially discriminates against recovering or recovered drug addicts. We disagree. The rule 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. Conversely, the rule allows a drug-addicted applicant who happens to be sober at the time of the drug test to complete pre-employment processing successfully. Here, for example, had Plaintiff applied for the first time in 2004, he would qualify for employment despite his status as a recovering addict. The triggering event for purposes of the one-strike rule is a failed drug test, not an applicant's drug addiction. The Supreme Court's opinion in Raytheon Co. v. Hernandez, 540 U.S. 44, 124 S.Ct. 513, 157 L.Ed.2d 357 (2003), supports our view of the one-strike rule. There, the Court held that an employer's policy not to rehire workers who lost their jobs due to drug-related misconduct constituted a neutral, legitimate, [and] nondiscriminatory reason for refusing to rehire the aggrieved employee. Id. at 53, 124 S.Ct. 513. The Court disapproved of the argument that, because the employee's misconduct related to his drug addiction, the employer's refusal to rehire him on account of that misconduct violated the ADA. Id. at 54 n. 6, 124 S.Ct. 513. The 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. See Hazen Paper Co. v. Biggins, 507 U.S. 604, 611, 113 S.Ct. 1701, 123 L.Ed.2d 338 (1993) (holding that an employer's decision wholly motivated by factors other than age does not constitute age discrimination, even if the motivating factor is correlated with age). Second, Plaintiff alleges that Defendant adopted the one-strike rule intentionally to exclude recovering and recovered drug addicts from its work force. The record belies that allegation. Before the adoption of the one-strike rule, the longshore industry suffered numerous serious accidents and injuries, including several fatalities. Defendant attributed those accidents in part to a culture that accepted the use of drugs and alcohol in the workplace. Defendant thought that it could reduce such accidents by eliminating applicants who might be more likely to use drugs or alcohol at work. With the support of the union that represented the longshore workers, Defendant began administering drug tests to new applicants. Defendant decided to make the disqualification of applicants who tested positive permanent because it thought that applicants who could not abstain from using an illegal drug, even after receiving advance notice of an upcoming drug test, showed less responsibility and less interest in the job than applicants who passed the drug test. Thus, Defendant's reasons for rejecting applicants who test positive did not include a calculation that an applicant might test positive because of a drug addiction, rather than because of recreational use. In short, nothing about the history of the one-strike rule leads us to conclude that Defendant adopted the rule with a discriminatory purpose. The ADA and the FEHA protect people who are recovering or who have recovered from a drug addiction; they do not protect people who are using illegal drugs when they apply for a job. It was lawful for Defendant to eliminate applicants who were using drugs when they applied to be longshore workers. It was likewise lawful for Defendant to disqualify those applicants permanently. Nothing in the record suggests that Defendant targeted or attempted to target recovered drug addicts, as distinct from recreational users. Finally, Plaintiff argues that the district court improperly granted summary judgment because Defendant learned of Plaintiff's drug addiction shortly after disqualifying him. We fail to see how Plaintiff's attempt to inform Defendant of his status after Defendant disqualified him has any bearing on whether Defendant decided to disqualify Plaintiff because of his protected status. See Raytheon, 540 U.S. at 54 n. 7, 124 S.Ct. 513 (If [the employer] were truly unaware that ... a disability existed, it would be impossible for her hiring decision to have been based, even in part, on [the employee's] disability. And, if no part of the hiring decision turned on [the employee's] status as disabled, he cannot, ipso facto, have been subject to disparate treatment.); Brundage v. Hahn, 57 Cal. App.4th 228, 66 Cal.Rptr.2d 830, 836 (1997) (affirming summary judgment on an employee's ADA and FEHA disparate treatment claims because the employer could not have discriminated on the basis of a disability of which it did not know). Plaintiff attempts to rely on our opinion in Hernandez v. Hughes Missile Systems Co., 362 F.3d 564 (9th Cir.2004), to show that he has raised a genuine issue of material fact with respect to his disparate treatment claim. But the facts in Hernandez clearly distinguish it from the circumstances here. In Hernandez, an employer fired an employee for failing to pass his drug test. Id. at 566. The employee later became sober and reapplied. Unlike in this case, the employee included with his new application a letter from his Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor that informed the employer of the employee's steady and consistent progress in his recovery from [his] disease. Id. That piece of evidence was crucial because, even though the employer claimed that it had not read the letter, a reasonable juror could have found that it did. Id. at 566-67. Consequently, we reversed summary judgment because a reasonable jury could determine that [the employer] refused to rehire [the employee] because of his past record of addiction and not because of a company rule barring re-hire of previously terminated employees. Id. at 570. Plaintiff has no such evidence. His letter informing Defendant of his drug addiction came only after Defendant's decision to disqualify him from further processing. Accordingly, Plaintiff's disparate treatment claim fails because there is no evidence in this record that Defendant disqualified him because of his protected status.