SUPREME COURT IS TO REVIEW REHIRING OF DRUG ABUSERS

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court, accepting a new case today on the legal
obligations of employers toward people with disabilities, agreed to decide
whether companies can refuse to rehire rehabilitated drug users whose
substance abuse had brought about their dismissals.

Under the Americans With Disabilities Act, current addiction is excluded
from the definition of disability, leaving employers free to fire those who
violate workplace rules against using illegal drugs. The question in the
case today, an appeal by Raytheon, is how the 1990 disabilities law applies
to the common employers' policy of refusing to rehire anyone dismissed for
workplace misconduct.

The federal appeals court in San Francisco reinstated a disability
discrimination suit brought against Raytheon by a former service technician
who maintained that he had conquered the alcoholism and drug problems that
had led to his forced resignation after 25 years at the Hughes Missile
Systems Company, which Raytheon later acquired. The company, invoking its
policy against rehiring, had deemed him ineligible to return.

"We hold that a policy that serves to bar the re-employment of a drug
addict despite his successful rehabilitation violates the A.D.A.," or the
disabilities act, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
said in ruling in June that the worker, Joel Hernandez, was entitled to
take his case to trial. The Federal District Court in Tucson, had earlier
dismissed his suit.

In its Supreme Court appeal, Raytheon Company v. Hernandez, No. 02-749, the
company is arguing that although the disability law "took pains not to give
special rights to drug users," the appeals court did just that by finding
one-time drug abusers entitled to a second chance at employment.

"The A.D.A. promises nondiscrimination," Raytheon said. "It does not
promise to insulate drug abusers from the consequences of their misconduct."

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission supported Mr. Hernandez when he
took his complaint to the commission in 1997. The Bush administration has
not taken a position on the issue before the Supreme Court, but will
presumably make its views known before the case is argued in October.

Returning from a midwinter recess, the court also granted review in another
disability-related case, an appeal by the Social Security Administration on
the definition of disability that determines eligibility for Supplemental
Security Income benefits.

The Social Security Act limits eligibility to people whose impairments are
so severe that not only are they unable to engage in their "previous work,"
but are also unable to perform "any other kind of substantial gainful work
which exists in the national economy." The statute defines the last phrase
as "work which exists in significant numbers" in the local region or
elsewhere in the country.

Invoking the statute, the agency denied benefits to a woman who said
cardiac and back problems prevented her from continuing to work as a
housekeeper. An administrative judge at the agency found that the woman,
Pauline Thomas, could work at "a light level of exertion" and retained "the
functional capacity to return to past work as an elevator operator."

But Ms. Thomas argued, and the federal appeals court in Philadelphia
agreed, that the job of elevator operator no longer existed in sufficient
numbers to qualify as available work under the statute. There was "no
plausible reason" why Congress would have wanted to deny benefits to a
person who "could perform a previous job that no longer exists," the United
States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit said in its opinion in June.

The government's Supreme Court appeal, Barhnart v. Thomas, No. 02-763,
asserts that the decision "will impose additional administrative burdens
and costs" on the Social Security disability program.

"Given today's dynamic and technological economy," the appeal said, "job
types are becoming obsolete with increasing frequency."

The government said that in creating the disability program, Congress had
never assumed that people were suited for just one narrow type of employment.

These were among the other developments at the court today.

[snip]

Knock And Enter

Accepting a government appeal, the court agreed to review a decision that
invalidated a search of an apartment in Las Vegas on the ground that the
police had failed to wait a sufficient time between announcing their
presence and breaking down the door. The interval was 15 to 20 seconds.
Executing a search warrant as the apartment owner, Lashawn Banks, emerged
from the shower, the police found weapons and narcotics. The Ninth Circuit
ordered the evidence suppressed because it found that the rapid and
forcible entry had rendered the search unconstitutional.

In its appeal, United States v. Banks, No. 02-473, the government argues
that the appeals court failed to give the police adequate guidance, and
that would lead to "needless and potentially dangerous delays" in
conducting valid searches.