Opinion
No. 02 C 78
January 15, 2002
MEMORANDUM ORDER
Tony Brown ("Brown") has filed a Complaint of Employment Discrimination (using the form provided by this District Court's Clerk's Office for use by pro se litigants) against his ex-employer United Parcel Service ("UPS"), accompanying his Complaint with. an Application To Proceed Without Prepayment of Fees ("Application") and a Motion for Appointment of Counsel ("Motion"), also on forms provided by the Clerk's Office. For the reasons briefly stated here, both the Complaint and this action must be and are dismissed, so that the Application is denied and the Motion is denied as moot.
Based on what is set out in the Application, Brown qualifies for in forma pauperis treatment in financial terms. But his difficulty lies in the fact that he must also overcome the hurdle of non-frivolousness in the legal sense defined by Neitzke v. Williams, 490 U.S. 319, 325 (1989) and refined by Denton v. Hernandez, 504 U.S. 25, 32-33 (1992). And in this instance the Supreme Court's consistent jurisprudence, most recently last week's unanimous decision in Toyota Motor Mfg., Ky., Inc. v. Williams, No. 00-1089, 2002 WL 15402 (U.S. Jan. 8), bars his claim without any possibility of a cure.
Brown seeks to invoke the Americans with Disabilities Act ("ADA") on the premise that UPS fired him unfairly because of his having failed one of the drug tests that it administered in conjunction with the drug abuse program in which Brown had participated for an entire year. But that scenario simply does not fit within the scope of any ADA-protected situation under the teaching of Toyota and earlier Supreme Court decisions.
Accordingly, as stated at the outset, both Brown's Complaint and this action are dismissed. That in turn calls for denial of the Application, while the Motion is denied as moot, and this Court so orders.