Court Opinion

ID: 9491479
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 14:15:23.039902+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:54:46.169357
License: Public Domain

CALABRESI, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
When this case was first appealed, I was troubled by a hypothetical: A company does not like reformed drug addicts and wishes to discriminate against them in employment. It knows that the ADA forbids this. Since the company cannot systematically fire or refuse to hire former addicts, it develops a strategy designed to reduce by as much as possible the number of former addicts it employs.
The company ascertains that a drug blood test that is highly effective in people with Types B and O blood (56% of the population) cannot be taken by people with Type A or AB blood (44% of the population). (For these purposes it does not matter whether this is so because Type A/AB people are deathly allergic to the test, or because the test gives false positives in them.) The company then requires only former drug addicts in its employ (or those former addicts who would be employed) to take such a test. It does this even though another blood test— which costs no more — is available and would be fully effective in all people regardless of blood type.
The company’s strategy is successful. Since Type A/AB one-time addicts constitute 44% of the former addict population, the company has — by instituting the test that they cannot take — reduced the number of past addicts in its employ by almost half (44% to be precise). Yet no one can doubt: (a) that having A or AB type blood is not a protected disability under the ADA, and (b) that more frequent testing of one-time drug addicts (or testing only former addicts) is permitted under the ADA.
It seemed to me that the decision of the court below would have permitted such a *158strategy to be used. The decision was based, essentially, on the following line of logic:
(a) Neurogenic bladder condition is not a protected disability under the ADA;
(b) The ADA allows more frequent drug testing of past drug addicts (or indeed testing only of such former addicts);
(e) More frequent drug testing that results in harm to one-time addicts with neuro-genic bladders must be permitted under the ADA.
And this logic in its terms would find nothing wrong with the A/AB blood testing strategy.
Nor could one argue, in support of the district court’s position, that the case before is substantially different from the offending hypothetical. Since the district court dismissed the case on a Rule 12(b)(6) motion, the plaintiff was precluded from introducing evidence that would indicate that his situation was essentially the same as that in the hypothetical. (This could in theory have been shown by demonstrating that 44% of the population had a neurogenic bladder condition, that another no more costly test that would be effective in all the relevant population was available, etc.) And it is no answer to say that we are all confident (as I surely am) that no evidence of this sort exists, for that is precisely the difference between dismissing a case on a Rule 12(b)(6) motion and letting it proceed to the summary judgment stage, where, if no such evidence was adduced, the defendant would be granted summary judgment.
Accordingly, I wrote an opinion for the panel reversing the district court. See Buckley v. Consolidated Edison Co., 127 F.3d 270, 275 (2d Cir.1997). And the dissent — which, it seemed to me, did not fully avoid the problems of the lower court’s reasoning — did not lead me to change my mind. Several things have occurred in the case since then, however, that allow me now to join the opinion of the in banc court, and I gladly do so.
First, I have come to agree with the in banc court (and the panel dissent) that the way to deal with my dangerous hypothetical is not through the ADA requirement that reasonable accommodations for disabilities must be made. See 42 U.S.C. § 12112(b)(5)(A) (1994). (The problems with using that requirement to deal with the hypothetical are as the in banc court — in the context of the ease before us- — describes them.) Conversely, as the in banc court also recognizes, the determination that no accommodation is needed does not end the case. The statute also mandates that any drug test administered be reasonable.1 And this additional requirement seems to me sufficient to avoid the dangers implicit in my hypothetical.
But this, of course, raises the issue of whether the plaintiff in the instant case has adequately pleaded that the test used was unreasonable. In this respect, Consolidated Edison (“Con Ed”) has made a significant change in its arguments to the in banc court. It now maintains that the plaintiff did not plead in more than a conelusory fashion that the testing procedure used was unreasonable.2 The argument is a winning one on a Rule 12(b)(6) motion, essentially for the reasons the in banc court gives. Additionally, since the plaintiff conceded in open court that he could not allege that the drug test was intended to or would, in fact, significantly reduce the number of former drug addicts employed by Con Ed, we needn’t consider what effect such allegations would have under the ADA.
I therefore conclude that, as the case is now before us, there is no danger that dismissing the plaintiffs complaint on a 12(b)(6) motion would allow an employer to engage in a strategy akin to that of my hypothetical.
There remains one point to be dealt with, however. The in banc court opinion cites a House Report that references a government drug testing manual that employers are “encouraged” to follow. This manual describes urine tests of the kind employed by Con Ed. *159The in banc court relies on this legislative history to support its holding that the procedure used here was reasonable and that the plaintiffs assertion to the contrary was entirely conclusory. That is fair enough — so long as one does not give the citation more weight than it ought properly to bear.
Let us suppose that, in the future, 44% of the population comes to have a neurogenic bladder condition. (Perhaps as an unfortunate but not disabling effect of the broad spread among men and women of second-generation potency-enhancing drugs.) Let us further suppose that at the same time a simple patch test for drug use has been developed that (a) is no costlier than the previously used urine analysis tests, (b) is as accurate, and (c) can be used on the whole population (those with neurogenic bladders as well as those without). It would surely be wrong to conclude that the fact that a House Report had endorsed urine analysis tests meant that such tests remained reasonable as a matter of law, and that claims of their unreasonableness could not survive a Rule 12(b)(6) motion. Indeed, to continue automatically to endorse urine analysis tests in such circumstances would mean that all the dangers of my A/AB blood hypothetical would be resurrected.
My point is simply this — one may argue about whether the language of a statute continues to govern when conditions that the writers of the statute did not imagine have occurred. But even if one feels bound to hold statutory words determinative despite altered circumstances, one surely ought not accord the same authority to legislative history that is not reflected in the language used by the legislators. The example employed in the House Report means no more than that at that time and given the then-existing conditions and technologies, a type of testing— standard urine analysis — seemed to the legislators to be not only reasonable but worth encouraging. Whether these tests would meet the statutory test of reasonableness in very different circumstances surely remains an open question.
It is not, however, a question that permits this plaintiff to survive a Rule 12(b)(6) motion. He has failed to plead that any significant number of people suffer from neurogenic bladder. He has not claimed that this number or the availability of alternative tests has changed since the House Report urged standard urine analysis. He has, in other words, made no allegations that would cast doubt on the generic reasonableness of the test recommended in the House Report. Accordingly, the conclusion that the reasonableness of the test used was not adequately traversed in the pleading seems to me to be manifestly correct. Because I agree that the plaintiff has not adequately pleaded that the test employed by Con Ed was unreasonable, and because I do not read the in banc court opinion to be saying anything about what allegations might be sufficient to survive a Rule 12(b)(6) motion if conditions involving urine analysis tests were different from what they are today, I concur in both the result and the opinion of the in banc court.

. The statute permits disparate treatment of former addicts only when this consists of administering "reasonable policies or procedures, including but not limited to drug testing, designed to ensure that an individual ... is no longer engaging in the illegal use of drugs.” 42 U.S.C. § 12114(b) (1994).

. Before the panel Con Ed had contended simply that no accommodation was needed.