Union Pacific Put a Flawed Test Over a Man’s Career
A railroad foreman stopped a treadmill test because of bad knees. Union Pacific used that to strip him of his job. A federal jury said that was illegal. The appeals court agreed.
TL;DR
- Allan Sanders was a Union Pacific foreman general in Nebraska who survived a cardiac arrest caused by a bleeding ulcer. He fully recovered, his own doctors cleared him with no lifting restrictions, and he wanted his job back.
- Before Union Pacific would let him return, the company required him to run on a treadmill. Sanders stopped early, not because of his heart, but because osteoarthritis in his knees made fast walking painful. He asked to take the same aerobic test on a stationary bicycle instead.
- Union Pacific flatly refused the bicycle test. A company doctor then used the treadmill results to declare Sanders a safety risk and blocked him from returning to work as a foreman general. The doctor later admitted that the entire reason for the treadmill test was concern about Sanders’s heart.
- Sanders sued under the Americans with Disabilities Act on two grounds: the company discriminated against him by treating him as disabled when he was not, and the company failed to accommodate his actual disability (arthritic knees) during the fitness test.
- A jury sided with Sanders on both counts and awarded him $1,023,424.34 in damages. Union Pacific appealed. On July 25, 2024, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit affirmed the verdict on every point.
- Three independent physicians testified that a bicycle test is a medically accepted substitute for a treadmill test for someone with knee problems. Union Pacific’s own medical expert could not override that weight of evidence.
- The appeals court found that Union Pacific failed to prove its “direct threat” defense; the company’s decision was ruled neither objectively reasonable nor based on the best available medical evidence.
What a Treadmill Test Cost One Man and What It Reveals About the Rest of Us
Allan Sanders did not have a heart problem. He had a bleeding ulcer that went catastrophically wrong and briefly stopped his heart. He was resuscitated. He had surgery. He healed. His own doctors cleared him, without any lifting limits, to return to exactly the job he had done before.
Think about what that means for a moment. The people who actually examined him, who understood his body and its recovery, said he was fine. They signed off. They put it in writing. And Union Pacific looked at all of that and said: we do not accept that. We need to run our own test.
That instinct, the company reserving the right to override what your doctors say about your own body, is not unique to this case. It is the machinery of corporate medical gatekeeping in action. Employers have entire internal medical departments, funded by the company, staffed by doctors whose paycheck depends on the company, built to make determinations about whether you are fit for work. The conflict of interest is baked in from the start.
Sanders told Union Pacific employees his knees hurt before the treadmill test began. He told Dr. Charbonneau, the company’s own associate medical director, that his knees were why he stopped early. He asked for a bike. He was told no. A simple modification. An obvious one. Three doctors, experts in the field, later testified that switching to a bicycle test is standard accepted medicine for someone with knee impairment. Union Pacific’s answer was still no.
What does it feel like to have your recovery dismissed? To have survived something that kills people, to have done everything right, to have your own physicians standing behind you, and to be told by a railroad company’s internal doctor that you are a risk? Sanders went from being a foreman general overseeing a crew of mechanics, a skilled position with authority and responsibility, to being locked out of his livelihood on the basis of a test that three medical professionals later said was the wrong test to give him in the first place.
The damages the jury awarded, over a million dollars, sound significant until you price in the years of income, the professional identity, the daily indignity of knowing your employer decided you were broken when you were not. Money compensates. It does not restore. And in this country, the only recourse available to most workers who get ground up by a corporate medical process is a lawsuit, if they have the resources to file one, if they can find a lawyer, if they can survive financially long enough for a jury to hear them.
Sanders won. Most people in his position never get that far.
What the Court Documents Actually Say: Verbatim
These quotes come directly from the Eighth Circuit’s July 25, 2024 opinion in Sanders v. Union Pacific Railroad Co., No. 22-2863. Nothing is paraphrased.
“Dr. Charbonneau admitted that he required the treadmill test and then refused to allow Sanders to return to work because of his concern that Sanders’s heart was impaired.”
- This admission directly establishes the ADA’s “regarded as” standard. Union Pacific did not restrict Sanders because he failed a neutral test; the company restricted him because its own doctor believed his heart was broken. That perception, accurate or not, is exactly what the ADA’s disability protections cover.
- It also undermines Union Pacific’s core defense. The company argued it was just following a doctor’s recommendation and therefore was not “regarding” anyone as disabled. The doctor admitting his own reasoning was cardiovascular concern collapses that argument entirely.
“Sanders’s medical expert testified that Union Pacific should have allowed Sanders to undergo a test on a bicycle in light of his knee condition and medication regimen. These factors, the expert explained, rendered the results from the treadmill test inaccurate. The expert opined that Union Pacific’s decision to limit Sanders was ‘completely uncalled for, completely wrong, and not based on any medical principles at all.'”
- The phrase “not based on any medical principles at all” is not casual courtroom hyperbole. It is a medical expert telling a federal jury that Union Pacific’s company doctor violated the professional foundations of his own field.
- The expert identified two specific reasons the treadmill result was worthless as evidence of Sanders’s cardiovascular capacity: his arthritic knees could not sustain the required pace, and his medication regimen affected his performance. Both were known to Union Pacific before the test concluded.
- The court cited this testimony as sufficient basis for the jury to reject Union Pacific’s “direct threat” defense, the company’s argument that it was legally justified in sidelining Sanders for workplace safety reasons.
“Union Pacific did not assist Sanders in identifying a suitable accommodation for his impaired knees. Instead, a company employee informed Sanders that only results from a treadmill test would be acceptable. This directive eliminated the possibility of an accommodation.”
- Under the ADA, once an employee requests an accommodation, the employer is legally required to engage in what the law calls an “informal, interactive process” to find workable solutions. Union Pacific skipped that process entirely, replacing it with a flat refusal.
- The court’s language is precise: the directive “eliminated the possibility” of accommodation. This was not a good-faith attempt that failed. It was a door slammed shut before any conversation could happen.
- Three physicians testified that a bicycle test is a medically appropriate alternative for someone with knee impairment. Union Pacific had expert medical consensus available and chose not to act on it.
“Union Pacific argues that Sanders failed to meet this element because he presented no evidence that the company was hostile toward disabled persons. But while our cases have spoken in terms of ‘discriminatory animus,’ the ADA does not require evidence of prejudice toward the disabled. Rather, ‘animus’ in this context means simply that the employer was motivated by the employee’s disability.”
- This is the court rejecting one of the most common corporate defenses in ADA cases: “We don’t hate disabled people, therefore we didn’t discriminate.” The law does not require hatred. It requires only that the disability was the reason for the adverse employment action.
- Union Pacific’s own records showed the company took action because of what it believed about Sanders’s heart. That is motivation based on disability. The word “animus” does not require a villain; it requires a cause-and-effect chain. That chain existed here, and the court said so plainly.
This Case Is Not Just About One Man or One Railroad
Public Health
Corporate fitness-for-duty systems are designed to protect workplace safety. When those systems rely on the wrong tests and refuse accommodation requests, they produce medically inaccurate results with real human consequences.
- The Bruce Protocol treadmill test is a cardiovascular stress test that requires a pace incompatible with knee impairment. Using it on someone with documented osteoarthritis does not measure their heart’s capacity; it measures their knee’s pain tolerance. The court record makes clear that three independent physicians recognized this, and Union Pacific’s internal process did not.
- Workers in physically demanding industries, rail, construction, manufacturing, often carry the accumulated toll of labor in their bodies: joint damage, chronic pain, medication regimens that affect physical performance. Corporate medical gatekeeping that ignores these realities pushes workers out of jobs they are capable of performing by testing the wrong thing.
- Sanders’s cardiac event was caused by a bleeding ulcer, a gastrointestinal emergency, not a chronic heart condition. The court record shows Union Pacific’s internal doctor nonetheless framed the evaluation around cardiovascular risk. That kind of diagnostic conflation, attaching one feared condition to an unrelated medical event, is precisely the “erroneous perception” the ADA was built to combat.
- The ADA requires that accommodations be explored before a worker is excluded. When employers skip that step, workers with manageable conditions, arthritis, controlled chronic illness, recovering injuries, are removed from the workforce entirely, adding financial stress, loss of purpose, and social isolation to existing health burdens.
Economic Inequality
The power imbalance in fitness-for-duty disputes is enormous. The company has lawyers, an internal medical department, and unlimited time. The worker has a paycheck that just stopped.
- Sanders held a skilled, supervisory position as foreman general. His job required technical knowledge of rail mechanics, supervisory responsibility over carmen, and the ability to step in on physical tasks when needed. Losing that position is not the same as losing an entry-level role; it is losing years of accumulated expertise and seniority.
- The jury awarded $1,023,424.34. That number reflects lost wages, lost earning potential, and damages. The fact that a jury needed to reach seven figures to make Sanders whole signals how significant the financial harm was over the period between his removal and the verdict.
- Most workers in Sanders’s position do not have what he had: the resources, documentation, and legal support to pursue a federal ADA case through trial and a full appeals process. The legal fight described in this court record spans years. Workers without financial cushion settle, give up, or never file at all.
- Union Pacific is one of the largest freight railroad operators in the United States. Its legal team has litigated ADA cases before. The company appealed a jury verdict, a verdict affirmed by a federal appeals court, arguing on every element. That posture, fighting to the absolute end against a single worker’s discrimination claim, tells you what priority this company assigns to compliance versus litigation cost.
- The ADA Amendments Act of 2008 expanded worker protections specifically because courts had narrowed the law too far. Union Pacific’s legal team argued for interpretations of the “regarded as” provision that the 2008 amendments explicitly overruled. Companies that argue against settled law do so because fighting costs less than changing policy.
Translating the Verdict Into Human Terms
Who Is Accountable and What You Can Do
Union Pacific’s leadership structure and board governance remain in place. The company litigated this case from the district court through the Eighth Circuit. These are the roles with direct oversight of the employment practices at issue.
- Chief Executive Officer, Union Pacific Railroad Company: Holds ultimate accountability for workplace policy and the company’s litigation posture against ADA claims.
- Chief Medical Officer / Associate Medical Director role: The internal medical directorate that designed and administered the fitness-for-duty protocol at the center of this case operates under executive authority.
- Union Pacific Board of Directors: Responsible for governance oversight and corporate ethics. A company that fights a jury verdict on ADA accommodation through the full appeals process does so as a matter of institutional policy, not individual error.
- Union Pacific Human Resources and Legal Departments: The “treadmill only” directive that the court identified as eliminating the possibility of accommodation was a company policy decision, not a one-off individual call.
Watchlist: Regulatory Bodies With Jurisdiction
- U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC): The EEOC filed as amicus curiae on Sanders’s behalf in this case. It has authority to investigate ADA discrimination complaints against employers. Workers in similar situations can file a charge at eeoc.gov before pursuing litigation.
- U.S. Department of Labor (DOL): Oversees workplace rights, including rights of workers with disabilities in federal contractor industries. Union Pacific operates under federal rail regulation and is subject to federal labor standards.
- Federal Railroad Administration (FRA): Regulates fitness-for-duty standards in the rail industry. The medical testing protocols used by railroad companies fall within the FRA’s oversight mandate.
- Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA): Workers who face retaliation for asserting ADA or safety rights can file whistleblower complaints with OSHA’s Office of Whistleblower Protection Programs.
Mutual Aid and Grassroots Resistance
- Know your ADA rights before a fitness-for-duty evaluation. If your employer requires you to take a physical or medical test to return to work, you have the right to request accommodations for the test itself if you have a disability that affects your performance. Document your request in writing. Keep copies of everything.
- Contact your union representative immediately if you are placed on work restrictions after a fitness-for-duty evaluation and you believe the test did not accurately reflect your actual capacity. Union grievance processes exist precisely for these disputes.
- Share this case with rail workers, manufacturing workers, and logistics workers in your community. The ADA protections affirmed in Sanders v. Union Pacific apply broadly. Many workers do not know they have the right to an accommodation during employer-mandated testing.
- Support workers’ rights legal clinics and ADA advocacy organizations in your region. Most workers facing disability discrimination cannot afford private litigation. Legal aid organizations and disability rights groups provide free or low-cost representation and filing assistance.
- Organize around employer medical gatekeeping. Fitness-for-duty policies that use rigid, one-size-fits-all testing without accommodation processes are standard across heavy industry. Collective bargaining agreements can and should address the procedures employers are required to follow before restricting a worker’s duties.
The source document for this investigation is attached below.
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