Union Pacific Beats Conductor’s Appeal Over Service Dog at Work

A Union Pacific Railroad Co. conductor lost his appeal over a denied request to bring his service dog to work to help with post-traumatic stress disorder after a federal appeals court found he could perform his job’s essential functions without the accommodation.

A three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit on Friday affirmed an Arkansas federal district judge’s decision that Perry Hopman’s accommodation request isn’t the kind of privilege or benefit of employment covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act. The trial judge vacated a $250,000 jury award against Union Pacific for violating the ADA.

Hopman even admitted that he can do his job without bringing his Rottweiler Atlas in the train cab with him to help with flashbacks, migraines, and other PTSD symptoms related to his military service, the appeals panel also found.

Hopman, a former US Army flight medic who served in Iraq in 2008 and Kosovo in 2010, accused the district court of misstating the nature of his accommodation request. He never demanded a “right to work without mental or psychological pain,” as the district court claimed, Hopman said in his appellate brief.

Instead, he’s simply “trying to manage the worst symptoms of his disabilities while at work,” he said.

Case law suggests that the “ADA must be construed broadly consistent with its purpose—to ensure that workers with disabilities have equal employment opportunities” as employees who aren’t living with disabilities, he said.

But having a service dog aboard a train would be unsafe and inconsistent with federal safety regulations, the railroad told the appeals court.

Judges Lavenski Smith, Roger Leland Wollman and James B. Loken sat on the Eighth Circuit panel.

The case is Hopman v. Union Pac. R.R., 8th Cir., No. 22-01881, 5/19/23.