## Facts

- Mario Echazabal worked at a California oil refinery for decades through independent contractors and later sought direct employment with the refinery operator, Chevron U.S.A. Inc.
- As part of Chevron’s hiring process, Echazabal underwent a medical examination that revealed a serious liver condition later identified as Hepatitis C.
- Chevron’s medical evaluators concluded that continued refinery work and exposure to workplace toxins would worsen his condition.
- Chevron refused to hire Echazabal and requested that the contractor reassign him away from toxic exposure or remove him from the refinery; the contractor then laid him off.
- Echazabal sued, claiming the refusal to hire and resulting job loss violated the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA).
- Chevron relied on an EEOC regulation treating a “direct threat” to the applicant’s own health as a permissible basis to exclude the applicant from the job.

## Issues

1. Whether the ADA permits an EEOC regulation allowing an employer to refuse employment when a disability would pose a direct threat to the employee’s own health (a “harm-to-self” defense).
2. Whether the ADA’s express reference to threats to “other individuals in the workplace” forecloses agency recognition of threats to the individual employee as a qualifying “direct threat.”

## Decision

- The Supreme Court unanimously reversed the Ninth Circuit.
- The Court upheld the EEOC regulation allowing employers to screen out an individual whose disability would pose a direct threat to the individual’s own health or safety.
- The Court concluded that the ADA’s affirmative defense for job-related, business-necessary qualification standards allowed the EEOC to recognize a harm-to-self direct-threat standard.
- The Court rejected the argument that the statute’s explicit reference to threats to others made the listed threats exclusive, emphasizing that the statute’s “may include” language is illustrative.
- The Court found the regulation reasonable and within the EEOC’s authority, including in light of employer workplace-safety obligations and potential tension between equal employment policy and safety policy.

## Legal Principles

- The ADA permits employers to use qualification standards that screen out individuals with disabilities if the standards are job-related and consistent with business necessity.
- The statutory reference to a “direct threat” to others is not exhaustive where Congress used nonexclusive language (e.g., “may include”), allowing agencies to recognize additional direct-threat applications.
- The EEOC may, through regulation, treat a significant risk of substantial harm to the employee’s own health in the workplace as a permissible “direct threat” basis for exclusion.
- A harm-to-self exclusion must rest on the direct-threat framework and be tied to job-related criteria and business necessity, rather than generalized assumptions about disability.

## Conclusion

The Supreme Court held that the ADA allows the EEOC’s regulation authorizing employers to refuse employment when, based on job-related and medically grounded assessment, the job would pose a direct threat of substantial harm to the applicant’s own health.


Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Echazabal, 536 U.S. 73 (2002)