Voice of the Recovery Community Award
Connecticut Community for Addiction Recovery (CCAR) is the recipient of The Joel Hernandez Voice of the Recovery Community Award!
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Rally for Recovery! 2008
Start planning your 2008 Rally for Recovery! event. This year's Rally for Recovery will take place on September 20, 2008! Learn more...
Campaigns: Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)
Fighting for Our Rights: Joel Hernandez’s Fight Against Job Discrimination and the ADA
“People in recovery from addiction, their families and friends know that there is hope for every one of us, in spite of our past history. When I decided to sue Raytheon, I wanted to let others know that recovery works, and that we can give a good, positive message that we can be productive, tax-paying citizens,” said Hernandez.
We remember and celebrate the life of Joel Hernandez, who passed away from cancer in February 2006. Joel was profiled in the Summer 2005 issue of Rising! and spoke at Faces & Voices of Recovery’s 2005 Summit, Rising! Recovery in Action. He will be missed and remembered for his humility, courage and strength.
Joel Hernandez fought hard to return to his old workplace. His fight to get his job back under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) went all of the way to the US Supreme Court and in October 2004 a settlement was reached before the case was ever brought before a jury.
Addiction recovery advocates around the country rallied to support Hernandez and honored him for standing up for his rights. In 1991, Hernandez resigned from his job as a Calibration Technician at Raytheon, formerly Hughes Missile Systems, in Tucson, Arizona. Alcohol and drug addictions had consumed him in spite of rehabilitation efforts under the company’s group insurance plan, including inpatient and outpatient treatment. He resigned in July, 1991 after testing positive for the use of cocaine. The company offered conditional rehire when he resigned.
Years later, after hitting bottom and a spiritual experience, he committed to AA and CA and a good sponsor, and was on his road to recovery. Hernandez was offered a maintenance technician job for a commercial property under the condition that he would submit attendance slips from his AA meetings. He accepted the position and 12 years later he is still employed by Marathon Property Management of Arizona. In 1994, in recovery, he applied for an electronics job at Raytheon, which had taken over the Hughes Missile Systems. There were six openings. He had done the production test job for many years before leaving the company. He submitted his application to Raytheon Human Resources along with a letter from an AA Counselor and a letter from a spiritual leader at the church of his conversion. Raytheon turned him down. The reason: his former use of cocaine.
Although he had worked for many years at Marathon Property Management, Hernandez decided to fight for the right to work at Raytheon after being denied opportunity and being removed from the employment pool. He filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which resulted with a “discriminatory charge” against the company under the ADA. His determination resulted in a pivotal court case reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court last year. The Supreme Court’s failure to make a clear determination on whether or not Hernandez had been discriminated against did not discourage Hernandez from his main goal. In March 2004 the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a jury must decide whether Raytheon turned Hernandez down because of his history of addiction. Before going to trial, a settlement was reached.
This case is an important test of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which protects people in recovery from job discrimination. (The act does not protect people with addictions who have not begun their recovery.) When the case was decided on December 2, 2003 the Supreme Court ruled that an employer like Raytheon might have some grounds to refuse to rehire people it claimed had broken employee conduct rules (in cases involving either “disparate treatment” or “disparate impact” claims). It ruled that if an employer has a uniform and neutral policy that bars the rehiring of any worker who was terminated for misconduct, and that it has a legitimate business need to have such a policy, it may be able to show that this is a legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason to refuse to rehire that worker.
But the Supreme Court also ruled that the Court of Appeals had used the wrong legal analysis when it ruled for Hernandez, and that technical issues of timing in the legal process meant that courts deciding this case could not consider the issue of discrimination against all recovering addicts.
What the Supreme Court Decided