Court Opinion

ID: 9652482
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 17:24:39.409649+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:51.790907
License: Public Domain

CRAIG, Judge,
dissenting.
Under this court’s established construction of the medical regulations governing eligibility for school bus driver licenses, appellee Chalfant’s medical history of seizure disorder is disqualifying, even though there is no diagnosis that he is afflicted at present.
The pertinent regulation, 67 Pa.Code § 71.3(b)(10), sets forth two distinct qualifications pertinent to the class of potential disability present here. If a school bus driver license applicant is unable to meet either one of those qualifications, the applicant is ineligible for the license. A fair reading of the pertinent provision reveals the independent qualifications to be as follows:
A school bus driver’s license applicant is qualified if the applicant—
[h]as no established medical history ... of seizure disorders or another condition likely to cause loss or impairment of consciousness or loss of ability to drive a school bus safely;
and
[h]as no ... clinical diagnosis of seizure disorders or another condition likely to cause loss or impairment of consciousness or loss of ability to drive a school bus safely. 67 Pa.Code § 71.3(b)(10)
The regulation does not require that there be a current “condition likely to cause loss or impairment of conscious*439ness or loss of ability to drive a school bus safely.” It disqualifies if there is only a medical history of a seizure disorder or a medical history of another condition of the sort described.
There is no effective difference between the interpretation involved here and the similar interpretation this court adopted in Department of Transportation, Bureau of Traffic Safety v. Walko, 97 Pa.Commonwealth Ct. 620, 510 A.2d 398 (1986). In Walko, Judge Doyle’s opinion confirmed that a history of coronary insufficiency is disqualifying, and that a current diagnosis of such a condition is not required to bar issuance of a license. Walko followed Department of Transportation, Bureau of Traffic Safety v. Miller, 89 Pa.Commonwealth Ct. 232, 492 A.2d 121 (1985), and Department of Transportation, Bureau of Traffic Safety v. Johnson, 88 Pa.Commonwealth Ct. 248, 489 A.2d 960 (1985). Although those cases dealt with cardiac illnesses, all of them confirmed the disqualifying effect of a medical history of such diseases, even when a current diagnosis of an active condition was absent.
The principle for interpreting the regulation involved in this case is no different. The regulation, which sets forth “medical history” in the alternative to “clinical diagnosis,” does not require diagnosis of a present disability. The regulation clearly uses the descriptive phrases, relating to loss of consciousness or loss of driving ability, as equivalent to naming all disorders having those characteristics, whether or not characterized as “seizure disorders.” The sentence indicates that an applicant is disqualified by a “medical history” of such alternatively described conditions, just as much as by a “medical history” of seizure disorders.
As this court stated in Johnson, we are compelled to defer to the expertise of the medical panel which promulgated the regulations. In the absence of contrary evidence, the courts are in no position to assume that even a remote medical history of a disabling condition is devoid of the possibility of a recurrence affecting safety. Here, as in Johnson, this court cannot adjudge the precautionary posi*440tion of the Medical Advisory Board to be unreasonable, arbitrary or capricious, when the board exercises its statutory power under 75 Pa.C.S. § 1517 to formulate regulations dealing with the special problem of school bus safety affecting children.
Therefore, because this case does not present the entirely separate approach which is possible by invoking section 504 of the Federal Rehabilitation Act of 1973, 29 U.S.C. § 794, the trial court’s decision should be reversed and the action of the department upheld as being in accordance with the regulations and the statute.