Obama Administration Sues to Protect Alcoholic Truck Drivers
Posted by Jim Hoft on Saturday, September 3, 2011, 11:26 AM
It’s an Obama World.
The Obama Administration is suing a trucking company for firing a driver who admitted he was alcoholic.
Unreal.
FOX News reported:
Citing a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Obama administration is suing a trucking company for taking the keys away from an Arkansas driver and eventually firing him after he admitted he was battling alcohol abuse.
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed a lawsuit this week arguing that Old Dominion Freight Line discriminated against Charles Grams by stripping him of his position and offering him a demotion even if he completed a substance abuse counseling program.
Instead, the EEOC argued, the North Carolina-based company, which has a service center in Arkansas, should have complied with the law, known as the ADA, while ensuring safety.
“The ADA mandates that persons with disabilities have an equal opportunity to achieve in the workplace,” said Katharine Kores, director of the EEOCs Memphis District Office, which covers Arkansas. “While the EEOC agrees that an employer’s concern regarding safety on our highways is a legitimate issue, an employer can both ensure safety and comply with the ADA.”
Steve Hayward added this from Lachlan Markay of the Heritage Foundation explains:
If the EEOC prevails, of course, it will mean that Old Dominion will still be liable both for any damage to life or property that results from a potential relapse by one of its recovering drivers – which in turn increases the risks involved in investment in the company – and for the cost of trying to ensure that such damage never occurs. All of these new burdens will raise Old Dominion’s cost of doing business, and hence the cost of everything they transport. And all of this can’t possibly ensure that a recovering driver does not relapse without the company’s knowledge.
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Published May 22, 2012 at 5:04 am - 78 Comments
#1AMERICAN commented:
let’s all repeat after me…
biggest POS mooslime that is destroying america…can’t wait to see his A$$ behind bars when the next admin digs all the crap up on his illegal activities
Valerie commented:
We can’t live with “damned if you do, and damned if you don’t” regulation. This is worse than government by waiver.
The Obama administration is not even a good Democratic administration: it is arbitrary and capricious.
forest commented:
The goal here is to force private companies to pay bad employees to not work.
Kinda like the Post Office does, and it’s working out fine for them, right?
Buffalobob commented:
Once again the brilliance of the obama administration shins as a 40 watt bulb just prior to burn out.
Stuart commented:
Would it be improper to suggest that Air Force 1 must be piloted by a blind alcoholic? One must not discriminate against the lesser abled now, must one.
rbosque commented:
Well Obama runs the country like a drunk driver so he feels some connection with the drunk trucker.
Granny commented:
Alcoholism is NOT a disability.
Granny commented:
I suppose according to the Obama regime we must also give drug addicts positions as pharmacists . . .
G-Rope commented:
It’s the attorney welcoming mat. F–K you very much.
bg commented:
++
you all do realize we are the ones who are insane don’t you??
oh yes, yes we are, you see.. it was hardly noticed when BHO et al
took US through the looking glass the day he became a contender..
==
Lenore commented:
Hard one. No. The freight co has a legitimate problem here. Be sued or be sued. What is a recovering alcoholic? How long is it considered suitable until it is deemed a recovery. Alcoholism is not a disability, in my eyes, a disability is an incurable condition. An incurable condition is not left up to you to cure, but to God. Since alcoholism can only be cured by the alcoholic then it is not a disability. It is a choice.
succotash commented:
OT/ Yesterday O and youngest daughter left on Marine 1 for Camp David(no sign of Mooch and oldest daughter) It was reported that M1 was forced to land in Fredricksberg because of bad weather and O motorcaded to CD but people living in the area say the weather was fine. Sounds fishy doesn’t it? Where is Mooch? Maybe he picked someone up in Fredricksberg. More clandestine meetings? Just strange!
Andreas K. commented:
This is not a disability. Alcoholism is a choice. Starting to drink, just like starting to smoke, is a choice.
Oh wait. It’ll be like with the tobacco companies. Not the individual is responsible, but the evil alcohol company that forced the poor guy to start drinking. How? No idea.
But then again these jackasses are counting diabethes as a disability as well. One of my co-workers is a diabethic and when he heard this the only thing he said “Are they f*cking nuts?!”
BarbaAZ commented:
Dare I ask if Charles Gram is black, Latino or Muslim? Is he an illegal alien? Is he a member of the Democrat party, the cpusa, (communists) or has he initiated a petition for supporting other fellow alcoholic truck drivers on the new scurrilous and tricksy We The People web site? The new Fool The People site catering to 13 year olds and just set up by the WH? Hmmmm?
dwd commented:
“The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’ ”
-Ronald Regan
Radegunda commented:
Blindness is a disability. Therefore blind people must have an equal opportunity to be truck drivers, or drivers of the presidential limo. Q.E.D.
Nanna1 commented:
This administration is out to destroy the business in this country. Especially in the south. NC, Tenn, and now Arkansas. Got to get them out, ALL of them!! They are slimy destroyers of the free!!
Succotash#12
This man is strange in every way. He is creepy, and from the defination of psycopath, that is what he is, not just a narcisist.
greg commented:
I would be more inclined to donate to an Old Dominion legal fund than a RINO reelection campaign fund
Jim - PRS commented:
And the Plaintiffs’ bar rejoices.
GT commented:
That picture is a bit misleading. That is NOT an Old Dominion truck. Nor do we know if he was even involved in a crash. No, I don’t want drunk &/or drugged drivers on the road. I have friends that are ‘recovering’ drug & alcohol addicts. And, they have been sober for decades.
greg commented:
This really bothers me… there is so much fertile ground for the Rep house to investigate, I am dismayed at the lack of activity. Get the Rino’s out
Carbon Pootprint commented:
The Losers Lobby Unites!!!!! See if you get enough people to join then Senators from old money families can leave people for dead and go home to sober up, pedophiles in Hollywood can rape children, character challenged mush mouthed race baiting extortionist can parade around as “civil rights” leaders, propagandist for the “one party” can pretend to be our watchdogs and crony capitalist can run banks into the ground, keep their ill gotten gains and the parasites in gubmint will force the public to bail them out. Ain’t America Great?!?!
Show me what a democracy looks like!! This is what a democracy looks like!!
Rhoda R commented:
GT, I have known recovering alcoholics also but, I’m sorry, there are consequences if they go off the wagon – some personal, like a divorce, some public, like killing an innocent bystander in an accident. It’d be one thing if the recovering alcoholic was going to work as an accountant but as a driver of a heavy semi? I don’t see why a business has to take that risk. I don’t see why the driving public has to take that risk — a semi is a hell of a larger weapon than a car. Do we expect a business to hire an account who has just gotten out of jail for fraud? Or a recovered pedophile as a kindergarden teacher? Let’s get a bit of common sense out there.
WillofLa commented:
I thought that in America, you could start your own business and not have to worry about the government coming in and tell you what kind of rules you could have pertaining to your employees. And the rules you want to put into practice are the rules that have customarily been used for decades. Rules, you are following, just like the rules that you are following about the safe use of the trucks, and you are following all the laws of the states you are driving through, etc. So where is the part of the rules you had to start your company by that said that if you wanted to fire a person who was not following the rules and the laws was NOT okay?
People, our country is no longer being run according to the Constitution. It has become a fascist nation, now. Under a fascist government, you have to do what the government says you can do. Oh yeah, you can start your own business, so long as it follows all the rules, but under a fascist government it makes up it’s own rules as to when it sees you doing something it doesn’t like it can come in and shut you down.
This is kinda like what the Obama fascist government did to Gibson.
Rose commented:
I think Obama’s Administration is SHOWING BY SUCH ACTIONS AS THIS that they are DESPERATE to have a REVOLUTION in America before the 2012 Election, like they one they used P.J. Crowley and the US Ambassador to Egypt to provoke in Egypt they were desperate to have occur before the Sept 2011 SCHEDULED Elections.
“Margaret Scobey, the U.S. ambassador in Cairo” [made comments on her discussions with the Muslim Brotherhood and El Baradei] “on the website of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where she works.”
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/talks+with+Muslim+Brotherhood+official/4212340/story.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/egypt/8289686/Egypt-protests-Americas-secret-backing-for-rebel-leaders-behind-uprising.html
…
The US government has previously been a supporter of Mr Mubarak’s regime. But the leaked documents show the extent to which America was offering support to pro-democracy activists in Egypt while publicly praising Mr Mubarak as an important ally in the Middle East.
In a secret diplomatic dispatch, sent on December 30 2008, Margaret Scobey, the US Ambassador to Cairo, recorded that opposition groups had allegedly drawn up secret plans for “regime change” to take place before elections, scheduled for September this year. The memo, which Ambassador Scobey sent to the US Secretary of State in Washington DC, was marked “confidential” and headed: “April 6 activist on his US visit and regime change in Egypt.”
SeniorD commented:
Wait a goshdarned minute! Commercial Drivers are regulated by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSR). Alcohol abuse is a distinct NO-NO according to FMCSR statutes. The Trucking Company (which could easily be fined, have their permits pulled, etc.) was duty bound to release the driver. Should that driver be responsible for a fatal accident – who do you think the litigators will target? Hint – the name is on the cab of every truck.
So, how can the inept Puppet President (whose comrades let 97,000 lb Mexican trucks hammer along US Interstate Highways) going to handle this? One Executive Branch Bureaucracy against another? Bring the popcorn this should be fun.
Rose commented:
#5 September 3, 2011 at 11:43 am
Stuart commented:
Would it be improper to suggest that Air Force 1 must be piloted by a blind alcoholic? One must not discriminate against the lesser abled now, must one.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Now THAT is a Disability Act order I could fully support. For this next year.
The Triguy commented:
Granny and Andreas K,
I respectfully (and I mean that sincerely since I admire the stands both of you have taken on past issues) disagree. Although I don’t consider alcoholism a disability, it is a disease. It is also not something that active alcoholics can simply ‘control’ by deciding not to take that drink. If that were the case, AA would not be in business and they are very much in business with tens of thousands of meetings every day all over the world. How do I know? I am a recovering alcoholic and have been for 24 years. I still go to two or three meetings a week so I don’t let bad behaviors take over and take me right back where I was many years ago which can happen with one single drink because of one bad decision. I know because I have friends that have gone back out after more than a dozen years of sobriety.
This has nothing to do with alcoholism but everything to do with control. Quite simply, this administration—liberals in general–want everyone to be controlled by them. Have you seen what the academics are trying to pass as accepted belief in the area of pedophilia? It’s another attempt to put certain classes in the victim role as a way of having them owe something to those liberals in power and to show how bad and heartless the nasty conservatives are. It’s just that simple.
By the way, I would not want an active alcoholic to have a driver’s license. I have fought for tougher drunk driving laws in my state with the minimum sentence of loss of license for one year at first offense so I’m not an easy touch. A very dear cycling friend was slaughtered—yes slaughtered—by a drunk driver going 70 miles an hour when he was hit on his bike. An alcoholic who has been in program and can show that he or she has recovered is a very different story. Please don’t confuse the two.
ar05075 commented:
Is this driver another black illegal alien drunk driving relative of Obowma????
Walden commented:
12 step programs routinely brainwash people into believing that they are addicts even years after quitting. This guy may have been clean for years.
I have little sympathy for the trucking company. They broke the law. These are the consequences.
WillofLa commented:
When you’re dealing with a administration who’s agenda is to “fundementally” change the American society, then we should get used to this as long as Obama is in office, and also to, people like him are still left in office long after he’s gone. Understand? What I’m saying is when a President leaves office I believe everyone who came into his administation needs to be fired by the incoming President and replaced with his own people. What? You’re saying that’s what happens anyway? Well, you’d be wrong. Do you people realize that most of all the people who are still holding jobs that usually come after a President establishes his administation are still there? All the Clinton people who were brought in after Clinton came into office ARE STILL THERE in the jobs that Clinton hired them to do!
Bush only replaced eight people of the attorneys in the Justice Dept. It has been customary that all those attorneys are let go and replaced with the attorneys that the incoming President wants in any Dept. he wants to put them. Ohhhhhh, but not Bush. He wanted the Democrat Party to think that he’s going to be friendly towards them, and he believed that firing the attorney’s would make him look like he didn’t trust them or something. No, Mr. President, what the deal is, you don’t want leftist attorneys who would work to undermine your administration still working in the Justice Dept.. It’s been our tradition to replace them with Republican attorneys so that they are of the same political persuasion as the man taking office is of. You don’t leave people from the last administration in place because they probably won’t want to cooporate with you and will do things the other Party wants them to do, that will mess up any efforts you have to make things better from what the last Party did to the country. Ohhhhhh, but not Bush. He wanted to be friends with the enemy to show them he was a nice guy.
See, Bush said during his campaign that he was going to “heal” the rift between the Parties so that they would cooporate with each other more. He said that there has been to much warring between the parties and that is part of the problems we see in our country. Well, Mr. President what you do what you want to do you leave the door open to any and all kinds of mischief the other Party wants to do to make you look as unaffective as they can get you to look. And the Democrats sure did. They made him look like a fool. And now look what we have in the White House.
And you know what? The same Clinton people throughout the government are STILL IN THE OFFICE THEY’VE BEEN all this time!!! None have been replaced, because why fire them when they have done such a bang up job in keeping the ground work fresh from what Clinton had done to the country, so that Obama wouldn’t have to do any replaceing of people in all these Dept.’s after he came in. He just left them in place. These are Clinton people who are bad leftist. These are people who thoroughly undermined the Bush administration making it a lot easier for Democrats to find out what Bush was doing. All they had to do was ask the Clinton people what Bush was doing and the Clinton people told the Democrats what was going on and what they needed to do to stop anything good Bush had planned. Spies! Spies everywhere!
If I was President the first thing I would do is fire every swinging (you know what) from top to bottom. I would shut down the State Department, fire everyone but I wouldn’t let them go home, ohhhh no. I would have them all put in jail and investigate each and everyone and find out what they knew and what they had done. These are dangerous people who don’t need to be left out on the streets where they can do what they do to undermine all the consevative efforts to fix this country!
WillofLa commented:
We should have seen some laws, rules, or whatever overturned, repealed or something from the Bush administration. That way Obama wouldn’t be able to do some of the stuff he’s been doing to us. But also to, Obama did pass more Presidential Directives than any other President before him. He could have overturned many corrections that had been done since the Reagan administration.
Obama has no idea what to do about anything. But he’s President, and all these hardcore leftists and Communists have been telling him what to do, and he’s done it. That what has caused all the problems we see. There are people in our government who are loyal to the Constitution and have kept up with what’s what, and will know what to put back in place which will make early corrections that will keep traitors from the Obama administration including Obama himself, so as to stop any damage that could happen if this new President doesn’t act quick enough after coming in to office.
The job is full of booby traps and if a President does something it may cause a trigger to be pulled and some other laws will take affect that give the Democrats the edge when the new President hasn’t been briefed enough yet as to what is going on.
And the incoming President doesn’t know what is what until the first couple of months after January.
JDStone commented:
As a holder of a CDL with a valid medical certificate he should have stated that he has had a problem with alcohol abuse.Not listing this on his medical exam report is grounds for disqualification. If the Dr.who signed the medical report knowing the driver had a problem with alcohol abuse could be held liable. The Obama administration has no say whatsoever in this matter. The Federal Motor Carrier Administration should weigh in on this for sure where public safety is concerned.
tommy mc donnell commented:
“americans with disabilities act” may be the most abused law in the history of this country. no matter how the left misuses the law to inflict this kind of abuse on the american people not one advocate for the disabled will say a word about it. i say repeal the law.
Randall R. Kniess commented:
As a truck driver, the drunk is unfit according to every standard that the government has placed on not just driver’s but the trucking companies as well. This is anarchy being practiced by the government. Maybe this is how they practice safety in Kenya or Indonesia, but not in any country that practices the rule of law. How, as a truck driver, can I ever be expected to respect common sense laws, let alone the myriad of obscure and silly regulations that are on the books? This tells me that government is too big and it is now eating itself.
Randall R. Kniess commented:
One more thing. Too bad Teddy Kennedy wasn’t here to witness this. Wait a minute. The old drunk would have been applauding this. A lot of his relatives could have asked for pardons.
vamoose commented:
Think this has anything to do with Obama’s EEOC going after Old Dominion?
Old Dominion is non union.
mcc commented:
Haven’t we watched this game being played before? Very recently, in fact…
In an Obama world, he’ll sue you – that’s right, he’s the lawyer in the courtroom – for not doing what every lick of common sense – and business sense – screams is insanity. You fight him and lose.
Then when the inevitable happens, he gets to sue you again.
Trucking company, meet Citigroup.
AuntieMadder commented:
I don’t know about the ADA crap, but if the man was reporting for work sober and wasn’t driving drunk, his employer had no reason to fire him. There’s really not enough reported here for me to have an opinion, positive or negative, about the former employee or the employer.
Angela commented:
AuntieMadder, how would you feel if it were a person with a seizure disorder. Would you say that that person should continue to drive a semi truck just because they had never seized while at work before? How about a narcoleptic person?
This is a question of liability here. If he DOES relapse and get in an accident, the trucking company is liable, and even more so if they know of his history of alcohol abuse and allow him to continue to drive anyway.
But this is all bullsh*t anyway, because alcoholism is not a disability.
Fuquay Steve commented:
What strange times we live in – when virtues are treated like vices and vices are virtues. Somehow I don’t see this ending well.
Greg commented:
Just as Designed.
This is a small part of Obumbles plan for destroying the American Economy. After this insurance rates for trucking companies are going to skyrocket, raising the price of tranportation and everything else.