The panel ruled that Roman Gonzales, a Security Police Officer at the Department of Energy laboratory for more than a decade, could pursue his ADA retaliation and "regarded as" disability discrimination claims despite Battelle's argument that the revocation was shielded from judicial review under the Supreme Court's 1988 decision in Department of Navy v. Egan.
Gonzales had disclosed a chronic back injury and his use of prescription opioids early in his career. Battelle accommodated him for years, requiring only that he not take the medication within eight hours of a shift.
In late 2017, a new program physician raised concerns about the opioid use, though Gonzales's medication regimen and job performance had not changed. A licensed clinical social worker concluded he was not reliable. Battelle temporarily suspended his Human Reliability Program certification, revoked his Section 1046 fitness-for-duty certification and terminated him in January 2019.
A jury in the U.S. District Court for the District of Idaho returned a mixed verdict, finding for Gonzales on his retaliation and "regarded as" discrimination claims while rejecting his race discrimination, unlawful medical disclosure and reasonable accommodation claims.
Battelle appealed, contending that because the facility stored spent nuclear fuel, any fitness-for-duty determination affecting guards was a nonjusticiable national security matter under Egan.
Circuit Judge Morgan B. Christen, writing for the panel, rejected that framing. The Section 1046 regulation "sets out a meaningfully different scheme that serves a different function" from the DOE's Human Reliability Program, she wrote.
The court distinguished the two regimes. The Human Reliability Program involves predictive security judgments, counterintelligence evaluations and final authority reserved for the DOE. Section 1046 sets out physical and medical benchmarks, including hearing, vision, cardiovascular health and field tests such as a half-mile run.
Judge Christen wrote that Egan insulated from judicial review "decisions concerned with the risk that individuals granted access to sensitive information may disseminate that information, not review of certificates concerned with whether employees are physically or psychologically capable of performing their jobs."
The panel noted that Section 1046 expressly incorporates the ADA's reasonable accommodation requirements, a feature absent from the Human Reliability Program regulation. Battelle had only temporarily suspended Gonzales's Human Reliability Program certification and never referred the matter to the DOE for a final determination as the regulation requires.
The ruling aligns with the Sixth Circuit's 2016 decision in Hale v. Johnson, which rejected a similar argument by an employer of a nuclear plant security officer.
Circuit Judges Carlos T. Bea and Roopali H. Desai joined the opinion. The case was argued February 4, 2026, in Portland, Oregon.