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The Employer Handbook Blog
What the ADA Requires When a Drug Test Flags a Legally Prescribed Medication
According to the EEOC, the company’s own doctors cleared two employees as fit for duty. The employer allegedly refused to let them return anyway, unless they switched the medications treating their disabilities. That decision cost $300,000.
This week is EEOC Settlement Week on The Employer Handbook: one recent EEOC settlement per day, with practical takeaways for employers. Today: a $300,000 ADA consent decree over a drug testing policy that allegedly drove out workers lawfully using prescription opioids to treat their disabilities.
TL;DR: According to the EEOC’s complaint, a tire manufacturer denied return-to-work opportunities to heavy machine operators with chronic pain disabilities, even after the company’s own medical providers cleared them as fit for duty, because they were lawfully using prescribed opioids to treat their conditions. The employer allegedly demanded they switch medications or lose their jobs. The EEOC sued under the ADA, and the case settled for $300,000 through a five-year consent decree covering five employees across three facilities.
Cleared by the Company Doctor, Still Told Not to Come Back
According to the complaint, both employees worked as heavy machine operators at the employer’s Clinton, Tennessee facility. Both sustained serious back and neck injuries from car accidents that substantially limited major life activities, and both lawfully used prescribed opioids to manage their chronic pain. The employer had known about the medications for years.
In February 2020, one employee was flagged after a random drug test returned positive for opioids. He explained the prescription. The employer sent him home, and two separate medical providers, including the company’s own physician, cleared him fit for duty. According to the complaint, HR still told him he could not return unless he switched medications. He could not. The employer terminated him at year’s end.
The second employee tested positive after a workplace injury in February 2020 and was cleared to return to normal work, twice, by the company’s physician. According to the complaint, HR reversed course and told him he had to change his medication or lose his job. His own physician confirmed he could not. His employment was terminated in August 2020.
The EEOC sued in May 2025 and resolved the case through a consent decree entered April 15, 2026, in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee. The $300,000 covers five employees across three Tennessee and South Carolina facilities, and the five-year decree requires new accommodation policies, annual in-person ADA training, and semi-annual EEOC reporting.
Three ADA Risks Every Drug Testing Policy Needs to Account For
All three failure points here are avoidable. What to fix:
A fit-for-duty clearance from your own medical provider is very hard to argue past
When the employer’s own physicians clear an employee to return twice and the employer still refuses, the argument that the medication posed a legitimate safety concern is severely undermined. A direct threat determination must be individualized, documented, and grounded in objective medical evidence. A blanket policy that overrides your own doctors’ conclusions will not satisfy that standard.
Requiring an employee to change a prescribed medication or lose the job isn’t an accommodation process
Telling an employee to switch medications isn’t the employer making an accommodation. It’s the employer handing the problem back to the employee’s physician and calling it done. When both employees’ doctors confirmed they could not change their medication, the employer’s position was effectively a termination dressed up as a condition of return. The interactive process wasn’t completed; it was bypassed. That distinction matters under the ADA, and it matters more when the employer’s own physicians have already said the employee could work.
A blanket drug policy applied to lawful prescription medications can be a discriminatory qualification standard
The complaint alleged the policy was not job-related and consistent with business necessity as applied to medically cleared employees. A facially neutral policy that screens out employees because of disability-related medication use is subject to ADA challenge. If your drug testing policy has no individualized assessment process for lawfully prescribed medications, that gap is worth closing before the EEOC closes it for you.
Opioid prescriptions for chronic pain are common in physical labor workforces. This case will not be the last time a manufacturing employer’s drug testing policy runs into the ADA.