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A three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit on Friday affirmed an Arkansas federal district judge’s choice that Perry Hopman’s accommodation demand isn’t the sort of advantage or advantage of work covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act. The trial judge abandoned a $250,000 jury award versus Union Pacific for breaching the ADA.
Hopman even confessed that he can do his job without bringing his Rottweiler Atlas in the train taxi with him to aid with flashbacks, migraines, and other PTSD signs associated with his military service, the appeals panel likewise discovered.
Hopman, a previous United States Army flight medic who served in Iraq in 2008 and Kosovo in 2010, implicated the district court of misstating the nature of his accommodation demand. He never ever required a “right to work without mental or psychological pain,” as the district court declared, Hopman said in his appellate short.
Instead, he’s just “trying to manage the worst symptoms of his disabilities while at work,” he said.
Case law recommends that the “ADA must be construed broadly consistent with its purpose—to ensure that workers with disabilities have equal employment opportunities” as workers who aren’t dealing with specials needs, he said.
But having a service dog aboard a train would be hazardous and irregular with federal safety guidelines, the railway informed the appeals court.
Judges
The case is Hopman v. Union Pac. R.R.8th Cir., No. 22-01881, 5/19/23.
