Ninth Circuit Upholds Nuclear Lab Security Officer's ADA Verdict Against Battelle Energy Alliance

Gonzales worked for Battelle, the Department of Energy contractor managing the laboratory, for more than a decade. He disclosed a chronic back injury and his use of prescription opioids to treat it early in his career. Battelle accommodated him for years, allowing him to work provided he refrained from taking the medication within eight hours of a shift.

The situation changed in late 2017 when a new program physician raised concerns about Gonzales’s opioid use, despite no change in his medication regimen or job performance. A licensed clinical social worker subsequently concluded that he was not reliable. Battelle temporarily suspended his Human Reliability Program certification and later revoked his Section 1046 fitness-for-duty certification, leading to his termination in January 2019.

At trial in the U.S. District Court for the District of Idaho, a jury returned a mixed verdict. It found in favor of Gonzales on his retaliation and "regarded as" disability discrimination claims, while rejecting his race discrimination, unlawful medical disclosure, and denial of reasonable accommodation claims.

Battelle appealed, arguing that the Section 1046 certification revocation was a security clearance decision protected from judicial review by the Supreme Court’s 1988 decision in *Department of Navy v. Egan*. The company contended that because the facility stored spent nuclear fuel, any fitness-for-duty determination affecting its guards was a nonjusticiable national security matter.

Writing for the panel, Circuit Judge Morgan B. Christen held that the Section 1046 regulation "sets out a meaningfully different scheme that serves a different function" from the DOE’s Human Reliability Program. The court distinguished the two regimes, noting that the Human Reliability Program involves predictive security judgments, counterintelligence evaluations, and final authority reserved for the DOE.

In contrast, 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 also noted that Section 1046 expressly incorporates the ADA’s reasonable accommodation requirements, a feature absent from the Human Reliability Program regulation. Additionally, Battelle had only temporarily suspended Gonzales’s Human Reliability Program certification and never referred the matter to the DOE for a final determination as required by regulation.

The Ninth Circuit’s 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. The court emphasized that *Egan* analyzed executive control over access to national-security information, not general concerns about an individual’s physical capacity to guard a facility.

The panel was unanimous, with Circuit Judges Carlos T. Bea and Roopali H. Desai joining Judge Christen’s opinion. The case was argued on February 4, 2026, in Portland, Oregon.