00-1406 Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Echazabal

Listen to this article

Since Congress has not spoken exhaustively on threats to a worker’s own health, the regulation can claim adherence under the rule in Chevron U.S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837, 843, so long as it makes sense of the statutory defense for qualification standards that are “job-related and consistent with business necessity.” Chevron’s reasons for claiming that the regulation is reasonable include, inter alia, that it allows Chevron to avoid the risk of violating the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 (OSHA). Whether an employer would be liable under OSHA for hiring an individual who consents to a job’s particular dangers is an open question, but the employer would be courting trouble under OSHA. The EEOC’s resolution exemplifies the substantive choices that agencies are expected to make when Congress leaves the intersection of competing objectives both imprecisely marked and subject to administrative leeway. Nor can the EEOC’s resolution be called unreasonable as allowing the kind of workplace paternalism the ADA was meant to outlaw. The ADA was trying to get at refusals to give an even break to classes of disabled people, while claiming to act for their own good in reliance on untested and pretextual stereotypes. This sort of sham protection is just what the regulation disallows, by demanding a particularized enquiry into the harms an employee would probably face. Finally, that the threat-to-self defense reasonably falls within the general “job related” and “business necessity” standard does not reduce the “direct threat” language to surplusage. The provision made a conclusion clear that might otherwise have been fought over in litigation or administrative rulemaking.

226 F.3d 1063, reversed and remanded.

Local effect:

The decision is not directly on point, but is consistent with current Seventh Circuit law, Koshinski v. Decatur Foundry, Inc. 177 F.3d 599, 603 (1999).

Souter, J.