A federal agency fired a man for having a heart condition — and then spent almost a decade in court arguing it had the legal right to do exactly that.

Joseph Simone worked as a Transportation Security Officer at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. He screened bags. He checked passengers. He showed up. When TSA hired him, he told them upfront about his mitral valve prolapse — a heart condition that caused occasional palpitations. A TSA physician reviewed his condition and cleared him as medically fit for the job.

Simone took occasional FMLA leave when palpitations hit — a day here, a day there. The court record is clear that his condition did not affect his ability to perform the essential functions of his job while he was on duty. He was not a liability. He was not a danger. He was a federal employee with a manageable heart condition doing his job.

Then, in 2014, TSA reversed course. The agency decided Simone was “no longer medically qualified” — the same job, the same body, the same condition that a TSA doctor had approved years earlier. TSA placed him on administrative leave on August 22, 2014. Six months later, in February 2015, they removed him from federal service entirely.

A Legal Shield Built to Let Them Get Away With It

The Rehabilitation Act of 1973 is supposed to protect federal workers from exactly this kind of discrimination. It says the government cannot fire someone “solely by reason of her or his disability” if they are otherwise qualified to do the job. It was written precisely for people like Simone.

But TSA is no ordinary federal agency. When Congress created the TSA in the wake of September 11 through the Aviation and Transportation Security Act (ATSA), it handed TSA enormous power over its own workforce. ATSA included a “notwithstanding any other provision of law” clause — legal language that essentially says: “This law beats every other law.” The government used that clause to argue that TSA could legally discriminate against disabled screeners, full stop, and that no court could do anything about it.

A 2006 federal appeals court ruling called Castro v. Secretary of Homeland Security blessed that interpretation. From that point on, TSA screeners existed in a legal dead zone — the only federal employees in the country who could be fired for a disability with no recourse whatsoever.

That quote, from the 2006 Castro decision, became the government’s shield for nearly two decades. Courts across the country cited it. TSA used it as a blanket excuse. And workers like Simone had no legal avenue to fight back.

Congress Changed the Rules — And the Government Pretended It Hadn’t

In 2012, Congress passed the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act (WPEA). That law contains its own “notwithstanding any other provision of law” clause — and it specifically says that every individual “holding or applying for a position within the Transportation Security Administration” is covered by Rehabilitation Act protections.

The WPEA did not quietly amend a footnote. It directly, explicitly extended disability discrimination protections to TSA workers. Yet when Simone sued, the government argued that the old 2006 Castro ruling still applied — that TSA’s shield survived even a law Congress wrote specifically to expand protections. The district court agreed with the government and threw out Simone’s case.

Simone appealed. On October 17, 2025, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the WPEA wiped out the Castro precedent. The court vacated the dismissal and sent the case back to the district court. Simone finally gets his day in court.

The Non-Financial Ledger: What the Law Cannot Quantify

Joseph Simone did everything right. He was transparent about his health from day one. He gave TSA the information they needed to make an informed decision — and they made it. A TSA doctor looked at his file, looked at his condition, and said: this man is fit to serve. Simone accepted that judgment and went to work.

That kind of disclosure takes courage. Telling an employer about a medical condition during the hiring process means trusting them to treat that information with fairness and dignity. Simone extended that trust to a federal agency of the United States government. He had every reason to believe that trust was protected by law. The Rehabilitation Act exists precisely to make that promise enforceable. For TSA screeners, that promise turned out to be a lie.

The years between his firing and the appeals court ruling tell their own story. Simone filed an administrative complaint in December 2014. He requested a hearing before an EEOC administrative law judge. That judge granted TSA’s motion for summary judgment against him on September 27, 2019 — five years after the complaint was filed. Then the EEOC issued a final order denying his appeal and his request for reconsideration. Then he filed in federal district court. Then that court dismissed his case. Then he appealed again. The ruling he finally received came in October 2025 — more than eleven years after TSA put him on administrative leave.

Eleven years. More than a decade of hearings, motions, dismissals, and appeals. Eleven years of telling your story to people with the power to help and being turned away. That is what bureaucratic cruelty looks like when it wears a legal face. The system did not fail Simone by accident. It was specifically designed, through ATSA’s broad exemptions, to make exactly this outcome the default.

Legal Receipts: Their Own Words, Unedited

“Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the [TSA Administrator] may employ, appoint, discipline, terminate, and fix the compensation, terms, and conditions of employment of Federal service for . . . individuals . . . to carry out the screening functions.” — Aviation and Transportation Security Act (ATSA), Section 111(d), the legal provision TSA used to argue it could fire disabled screeners without consequence

“The plain language of ATSA indicates that TSA need not take the requirements of the Rehabilitation Act into account when formulating hiring standards for screeners.” — Castro v. Secretary of Homeland Security, 472 F.3d 1334 (11th Cir. 2006), the ruling that stripped TSA screeners of disability rights for nearly two decades

“Notwithstanding any other provision of law, any individual holding or applying for a position within the Transportation Security Administration shall be covered by — [the provisions of the Rehabilitation Act prohibiting disability discrimination and retaliation].” — Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act (WPEA), 5 U.S.C. § 2304(a), enacted 2012 — the law the government pretended did not change anything

“For a statute ‘to supersede all other laws,’ a ‘clearer statement is difficult to imagine’ than ‘notwithstanding’ language.” — Cisneros v. Alpine Ridge Group, 508 U.S. 10, 18 (1993), cited by the Eleventh Circuit in rejecting the government’s argument that ATSA’s older “notwithstanding” clause beat the WPEA’s newer one

“The WPEA abrogated our holding in Castro, and the district court erred by dismissing Simone’s complaint pursuant to that holding.” — Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, Joseph Simone v. Secretary of Homeland Security, October 17, 2025 — the ruling that finally gave Simone the right to be heard

The Timeline: Eleven Years to Get a Hearing

Societal Impact: Who Else Got Burned by This Legal Loophole

Economic Inequality: A Two-Tier Federal Workforce

Every other federal employee in the United States has the right to sue for disability discrimination under the Rehabilitation Act. Postal workers, park rangers, IRS clerks, FBI analysts — all of them carry that protection automatically. TSA screeners, for nearly two decades, did not. They were carved out of the law’s protection by a single clause in ATSA, and courts enforced that carveout without hesitation.

TSA employs tens of thousands of transportation security officers across hundreds of airports nationwide. These are working-class jobs. Airport screeners are not executives collecting stock options; they are hourly workers performing physically demanding, repetitive labor in high-traffic public environments. They are also, statistically, more likely to develop occupational health conditions over time. The very workers most likely to need disability protections were the ones systematically stripped of them.

The Castro ruling created a legal reality in which TSA could fire a screener for a managed, non-disqualifying medical condition — as happened to Simone — while that same worker had no legal avenue to challenge the decision. That is a structural economic harm layered on top of the individual harm. You lose your job, your income, and your ability to fight back simultaneously. The law designed that outcome by accident at best and by design at worst.

Public Health: When the Government Punishes Disclosure

Joseph Simone disclosed his heart condition when he was hired. That is exactly what health transparency in employment is supposed to look like. The system worked: a doctor reviewed the information, assessed the risk, and cleared him. Disclosure led to clearance, and clearance led to employment. That is the correct outcome.

What TSA did next — reversing that clearance years later, with no apparent change in Simone’s actual ability to do the job, and then fighting for a decade to deny him any legal recourse — sends a direct message to every TSA employee with a health condition: disclosure gets you fired. When federal workers learn that honesty about their health can cost them their careers and their livelihoods, many will stop being honest. They will hide symptoms. They will avoid medical care that might generate a paper trail. That is a public health problem wearing the costume of an employment dispute.

Workers who fear medical transparency do not get healthier. They get sicker, quieter, and more isolated. The chilling effect of the Castro ruling on health disclosure among TSA’s workforce cannot be measured in a court record — but it is real, and it falls hardest on the workers who can least afford it.

The Cost-of-a-Life Metric: What a Legal Shield Really Buys

The Other Courts That Looked Away

The Eleventh Circuit’s ruling makes clear that other federal courts had every opportunity to address the WPEA’s effect on TSA screener rights — and chose not to. The pattern the court describes is damning in its consistency.

The Seventh, First, and Second Circuits all ruled that TSA screeners lacked Rehabilitation Act protections — but every one of those decisions came before the WPEA was enacted in November 2012. They were applying old law that Congress had already updated. Courts cited them anyway.

The Fifth Circuit addressed the conflict between the Rehabilitation Act and ATSA in a 2021 ruling without mentioning the WPEA at all. A federal court in 2021 decided a disability rights case involving TSA screeners and simply did not engage with the 2012 law Congress passed specifically to address that issue.

The Ninth Circuit acknowledged the WPEA question in a 2023 case but declined to answer it because the issue had not been raised at the district court level. The First Circuit, in a 2024 decision issued after oral argument in Simone’s case, chose to dismiss on the merits rather than answer the ATSA-versus-WPEA conflict. The Eleventh Circuit is now the first federal appeals court to answer the question directly. Every other circuit either dodged it, ignored it, or was working from outdated law.

What Now: Who Is Watching, and What Can You Do

The Eleventh Circuit’s ruling sends the case back to the district court to determine whether Simone properly exhausted his administrative remedies before filing suit. The merits of his discrimination and retaliation claims have still never been adjudicated. He is not at the finish line. He is at the starting gate — eleven years later.

The Watchlist

The Resistance

If you are a current or former TSA screener who was terminated, forced into a medical separation, or denied an accommodation for a disability — especially between 2006 and 2025 — contact a federal employment attorney immediately. The Eleventh Circuit’s ruling may affect your right to reopen or file claims. Organizations like the National Employment Law Project, Disability Rights Advocates, and federal employee unions including the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) provide legal resources and advocacy for workers in exactly this situation. The law is finally on your side. Find the people who know how to use it.