Diabetes ruled a disability by law

SAN FRANCISCO — In a decision with potential implications for the nation's 24 million diabetics, a federal appeals-court panel ruled Friday that a Type 2 diabetes patient was entitled to the protections of the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA).

A lawsuit by Larry Rohr, of Mesa, Ariz., charging that his public-utility employer discriminated against the disabled by pushing him out of his job, was wrongfully dismissed by a lower court as involving a disease, not a disability, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled.

The three-judge panel also found fault with the employer's grounds for insisting Rohr take a lower-paying job, disability benefits or early retirement because he failed to take a test showing he could use a respirator that had little to do with his work as a welding metallurgy specialist.

Rohr described his job as engineering-services related and predominantly performed in an office.

Rohr's dismissal after 23 years with the Salt River Project Agricultural Improvement and Power District constituted discrimination against the disabled as it was in response to a request from Rohr's doctor that he be exempted from occasional out-of-area assignments that interfered with his insulin treatment and diet, the judges concluded.

"The ADA defines 'disability' as a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more of the major life activities of such individual," wrote the judges.

"Diabetes is a physical impairment because it affects the digestive, hemic and endocrine systems, and eating is a major life activity."

Rohr's suit against the energy utility, one of Arizona's largest, will now go to trial in U.S. District Court in Phoenix.

The lawyer for Salt River, John Egberg, said the utility intended to fight the claim that Rohr's dismissal was an act of discrimination.

The ADA was enacted in 1990 and amended in 2008.