Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, DISCRIMINATION—DISABILITY—S.D. Ohio: Summary judgment denied in ADA case involving city employee on pain medication, (Sep 28, 2026)

By Steven Melendez

A federal court found factual disputes remain around after the city relied on a doctor who recommended the employee be banned from driving at work.

A federal district court in Ohio denied summary judgment for either side in a case brought by a Cincinnati motor equipment operator who was medically separated from employment after a doctor found her unfit to drive due to her use of pain medication. A claim under the ADA and a claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 rely on still-disputed facts about whether the doctor’s findings represented a proper, individualized assessment of her driving ability. The court also granted summary judgment for the city on a claim under the ADEA after the employee indicated she no longer wishes to pursue it (Stinson v. Metropolitan Sewer District of Greater Cincinnati, No. 1:24-cv-738, (S.D. Ohio Sept. 25, 2026)).

Equipment operator. The employee worked for the City of Cincinnati from 1998 through 2024, working as a “Motor Equipment Operator 2” at the time of her separation. Driving was an essential part of that job, where the employee operated a “flush vac truck used for sewer cleaning operations,” according to the ruling.

The employee has chronic knee and lower back pain, limiting her ability to stand and walk. For about 14 years prior to the events at issue, she was prescribed oxycodone in the form of Percocet up to five times a day as needed and tizanidine every eight hours as needed for pain. In December 2022, her physician additionally prescribed OxyContin. She testified she only took tizanidine and OxyContin at night, and that oxycodone failed to make her “drowsy, dizzy, or sedated,” according to the ruling.

Between November 29, 2022, and November 17, 2023, the employee was involved in four low-speed accidents while driving city vehicles. After the first accident, the city referred her to a doctor for a fitness-for-duty evaluation. The doctor observed no signs of impairment and received a note from the employee’s physician, confirming her medication regime, and cleared her for full duty. After three more accidents, she underwent a second examination with the doctor, who “asked her to stand on her toes and on each foot to assess balance, but did not perform blood-level testing, interview coworkers, or conduct any functional driving assessment.” The doctor later testified that she did not exhibit dizziness and that any balance issues were due to her orthopedic conditions.

Driving restriction. But the doctor cited a 2021 Journal of Medical Toxicology article on opioid use and neurocognitive impairment, and pointing to her multiple accidents imposed a restriction of “no driving during work hours.” She attempted without success to have that restriction lifted, submitting optometry records demonstrating she met vision requirements and ultimately discontinuing OxyContin. But the doctor still declined to lift the restriction, citing her other medications.

She then notified the city that she believed the decision was made unlawfully and filed multiple grievances through her labor union and a charge of discrimination and retaliation with the EEOC. The employee was briefly placed on light duty and was offered alternative city work that did not require driving, but all the positions offered amounted to pay reductions of at least $11,000 per year. When she was unwilling to accept one of these positions, she was separated from duty. When she applied for benefits through the city’s long-term disability insurer, the insurer found there was insufficient evidence to support the fact that she was unable to drive.

On December 23, 2024, the employee filed suit. Her first amended complaint alleges under the ADA that the city subjected her to an unlawful fitness-for-duty (FFD) examination, failed to provide reasonable accommodation, and retaliated against her for engaging in protected activity. An additional count under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 alleged the city violated her Fourteenth Amendment right to equal protection. In a third count, she alleged violation of the ADEA, but she has indicated she no longer wishes to pursue that claim.

She later moved for partial summary judgment on the ADA claim, and the city moved for summary judgment on all claims.

ADA claims. The ADA prohibits requiring a medical examination unless it is “shown to be job-related and consistent with business necessity.” Here, based on her pattern of accidents and safety-related comments about her prescriptions, the city was justified in requiring the exam, according to the ruling.

But genuine questions of material fact still remain as to whether her driving restriction was based on an adequate assessment of her abilities to perform her required duties. She testified that she took tizanidine exclusively at night since it caused drowsiness, took OxyContin once per day at night, and that oxycodone failed to make her drowsy. Her treating physician reported no known performance issues, and no supervisor or coworker observed her impaired at work, and the city-referred doctor initially cleared her to drive on the same medications. Since a reasonable jury could decide the issue in either direction, the court found no party entitled to summary judgment on the claim arising from the evaluation.

Failure-to-accommodate claim. The same issue exists around her failure-to-accommodate claim, the court found. Failure-to-accommodate claims can include situations where an employee requires no special accommodation, which the employee alleges is the case. The parties also dispute whether the alternative jobs she was offered constitute reasonable accommodation, but the issues ultimately depend on whether she could perform her job functions without accommodation. Since that remains in dispute, the matter cannot be resolved on summary judgment, the court found.

The city also argued its actions are protected by the honest-belief rule, since it relied on the doctor’s findings and recommendation. But competing inferences are still possible about “whether the City’s reliance was reasonably based on particularized facts concerning Plaintiff,” according to the ruling, which found the honest-belief rule does not justify summary judgment.

Retaliation. The court found that the employee presented sufficient evidence for a prima facie case of retaliation under the McDonnell Douglas framework. The city, on the other hand, has presented legitimate, non-retaliatory reasons for its actions, including the driving restriction, lack of availability of continued light-duty work, and the employee’s rejection of alternative positions. A reasonable jury could find either that her opposition to the city’s decisions were a but-for cause of one of the actions, or that the city’s actions came from the driving restrictions and her refusal of other assignments, the court found denying summary judgment to either side.

42 U.S.C.§ 1983. The city correctly argued that a claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 requires a constitutional violation, not simply an ADA violation, according to the ruling. But the employee in this case argued that the city subjected employees with prescription medication use to differential treatment without a rational basis, violating the Equal Protection Clause, and that this “stemmed from City policy, custom, and/or failure to train or supervise.”

The court found that the city did not meaningfully address her constitutional claims or demonstrated the absence of a genuine dispute of meaningful fact, denying summary judgment.

The case is No. 1:24-cv-738.

Judge: Bowman, S.

Attorneys: William Kash Stilz, Jr. (Roush & Stilz) for Livia Stinson. William Christopher Hicks, Office of the City Solicitor, for Metropolitan Sewer District of Greater Cincinnati and City of Cincinnati.

Companies: Metropolitan Sewer District of Greater Cincinnati; City of Cincinnati

Cases: Discrimination DisabilityDiscrimination Retaliation OhioNews