12.29.2007
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| Court orders judge to reconsider ruling on deaf truck drivers
Court orders judge to reconsider ruling on deaf truck drivers 12/29/07 San Francisco Chronicle Quote:
A federal appeals court ordered a San Francisco judge on Friday to reconsider his ruling requiring United Parcel Service to give its deaf employees a chance to compete for jobs as drivers of small delivery trucks.
The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 13-2 that U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson had used the wrong standard in his 2004 decision that UPS was discriminating against deaf people with safe driving records by refusing to consider them for commercial driving jobs.
Henderson allowed the plaintiffs to show that they were qualified for the jobs based on their driving records, and failed to require them to show that they were capable of driving delivery trucks, the court said. The court didn't say how that should be done, but stressed that it was still up to the company to prove its policy is a legitimate safety measure.
UPS, the world's largest private package carrier, called the ruling "a victory for public safety." But a lawyer for hundreds of deaf and hard-of-hearing employees described it as a minor setback and predicted that Henderson would reach the same conclusion after a new trial.
The dispute involves trucks weighing 10,000 pounds or less, which account for about 9 percent of the Atlanta company's fleet of 65,000 delivery vehicles. U.S. Department of Transportation regulations set hearing standards for drivers of trucks weighing more than 10,000 pounds, but UPS applies the same standards to its smaller vehicles.
| SFgate  |
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