EEOC Sues Stevens Transport for Refusing to Hire Driver

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has filed a federal lawsuit against Dallas-based refrigerated carrier Stevens Transport Inc. for refusing to hire a truck driver with bipolar disorder.

“The trucking company unlawfully refused to hire this qualified candidate, disregarding his physical exam results, his completion of training, his CDL and the positive report from his medical provider,” EEOC Regional Attorney Robert Canino said in a statement.

Beginning in March 2015, the carrier put up an “unnecessary roadblock” to driver Brian Brown’s employment by “discounting his skills and abilities as a driver when it turned him away,” Canino said.

By not hiring Brown due to his bipolar medical condition, the company violated the American Disabilities Act of 1990 and Title I of the Civil Rights Act of 1991, EEOC said in its lawsuit filed in the U.S. Northern District of Texas in Dallas.

The agency is seeking undisclosed back pay and compensatory and punitive damages for Brown, as well as injunctive relief.

Bruce Dean, Stevens Transport’s general counsel, said the company does not comment on pending litigation.

EEOC said it had communications with the carrier but was unable to secure a “conciliation agreement acceptable to the Commission.”

Despite a note from Brown’s medical provider, EEOC said a physician contracted by Stevens Transport concluded that Brown was disqualified from further consideration due to Stevens Transport’s hiring policy.

“Mr. Brown was informed that in order to be considered for hire, he would need to stop taking the medications altogether and then come back for reconsideration,” the lawsuit said.

Meaghan Shepard, a Dallas-based senior trial attorney for EEOC, declined to identify the medications.

“What we’re claiming is that Stevens did not do any individualized assessment of Mr. Brown, which is what’s required by the law,” Shepard told Transport Topics.

EEOC’s Dallas-based Supervisory Trial Attorney Suzanne Anderson added, “This is not a test case. It’s brought under the EEOC’s mission to enforce the Americans With Disabilities Act.”

Duane DeBruyne, a Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration spokesman, said the decision on whether to disqualify a driver for bipolar disorder rests with the individual case assessment, evaluation and medical judgment of the certifying medical examiner.

“The medical examiner may confer with treating specialists to obtain their opinions concerning the stability of an individual’s underlying medical condition and the impact to safely operate a commercial motor vehicle in interstate commerce,” DeBruyne told TT. “However, the final medical certification decision rests with the certified medical examiner.”

A 2009 special FMCSA medical panel paper on psychiatric disorders and commercial motor vehicle driver safety said bipolar disorder can be “associated with impulsivity and poor judgment.”

“Some individuals with mood disorders, even when treated to full remission, demonstrate residual disturbances of short-term memory, concentration and mental processing speed,” the panel’s report concluded.

FMCSA regulations say a driver is physically qualified to drive a commercial vehicle if that person “has no mental, nervous, organic, or functional disease or psychiatric disorder likely to interfere with his/her ability to drive a commercial motor vehicle safely.”

Unlike drivers with diabetes, vision and hearing disorders who fail medical exams, there is no process for job applicants who have bipolar disorder to seek an exemption from FMCSA.

Natalie Hartenbaum, a doctor and FMCSA-certified medical examiner, said that despite federal “advisory guidelines,” the decision on whether a truck driver with a bipolar disorder can drive safety is ultimately left to the medical examiner.

Hartenbaum’s company, Occumedix Inc. of Dresher, Pennsylvania, trains medical examiners. Hartenbaum said she’s been following the Stevens Transport case, but so far the information made public by the EEOC does not make clear who made the decision to disqualify Brown. “But certainly, FMCSA has said all medical examiners should use all available resources to make the certification determination,” Hartenbaum said.

Some medications, such as lithium, can make a driver lethargic, Hartenbaum said.

“Given that, it’s generally not the medication that’s going to disqualify a driver, but the medication can be a flag to an examiner that there’s an underlying condition,” she added.