The Justice Department discovered that two organizations in Tennessee discriminated against a lawyer who was forced to pay thousands of dollars for evaluations and had his law license refused for almost three years due to his usage of a medicine to manage his opiate use problem.
The findings, which were released last Tuesday in a letter to the Tennessee Lawyers Assistance Program and the Tennessee Board of Law Examiners, expand on the Justice Department’s initiatives to prevent discrimination against the millions of individuals recovering from opioid addiction. This is the first case pertaining to the legal profession and the third involving employment and license.
The comprehensive public letter explains how the organizations together violated the Americans with Disabilities Act, which safeguards individuals with substance use disorders, by forcing him to choose between maintaining his treatment as recommended by his treating physician and obtaining his legal license.
The letter from the Justice Department described the organization’s onerous activities against the attorney, which were motivated by stigma and conjecture. They included mandating that he pay for his own psychiatric and physical assessments, enroll in a treatment program, and cease using buprenorphine, an opioid use disorder prescription supplied by his doctor that was approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
The lawyer is Derek Scott, whose fight for his legal license was covered by NBC News in March. The letter refers to him by his initials, D.S. Scott acknowledged that he was referred by D.S. and that he collaborated closely with investigators from the Justice Department.
Requests for response from the Justice Department were not answered.
David Sinkman, a former federal prosecutor and current lawyer with the civil rights law firm Kaplan & Grady who focuses on substance use discrimination cases but did not work with Scott, said, “This is a powerful finding by the Department of Justice that applies beyond admission to practice law in Tennessee, since there are similar licensing restrictions in other states and for other professions.”
According to the findings of the U.S. attorney’s investigation for the Middle District of Tennessee, the limitations placed on individuals such as Scott violate the Americans With Disabilities Act and are ineffective in ensuring that lawyers are fit to practice law.
In an interview, Scott—who passed the bar test for the first time in 2021—said he felt validated by the results. He said, “I felt like they put up a barrier that they knew I couldn’t get past.”
Following an investigation of his case by the Justice Department and NBC News, the conditions were removed in December 2023. Currently taking his medicine, he works as a lawyer, specializing in criminal defense, after being sworn into the Tennessee bar in January.
“If there are other people out there, it makes me feel good that they can see this,” he added. I wish there had been a case like this to point to when I first began out, after passing the bar test.
The U.S. attorney’s office sent a letter with five recommendations that Tennessee legal groups should immediately follow in order to comply with the law. These included eliminating the practice of asking applicants about their diagnosis or treatment for mental health or drug use issues, as well as neither banning or restricting bar applications and attorneys from taking medicine to treat opioid use disorder.
Additionally, it issued a warning that if the two entities did not engage in voluntary compliance agreements, appropriate action would be taken. In other instances, the Justice Department has brought legal action against organizations that disregarded its suggested changes.
The Lawyers Assistance Program and the Tennessee Board of Law Examiners chose not to comment on the results.
Burdensome
Scott had always wanted to practice law, but after he started abusing opiates in the 1990s, it seemed unattainable. Like millions of other people, his dependence on them soon spiraled into addiction.
More than 9 million adults in the U.S. require treatment for opioid use disorder, according to a recentCenters for Disease Control and Prevention report, but only 25% are able to access federally approved medications like methadone and buprenorphine. They have been found to be effective in curbing withdrawal symptoms and cravings and are safe to use long term, but they remain strikingly underused nationwide.
After having struggled for years, Scott was prescribed buprenorphine in 2011. He now credits it with giving him his life back. He enrolled in college, then law school, interned with a state appellate judge and thought he had finally achieved his dream when he passed the bar exam in 2021.
The discrimination started after Scott disclosed his use of the medication in an interview for his license approval, according to the Justice Department. The Tennessee Lawyers Assistance Program, which helps attorneys with substance use issues, required him to undergo an evaluation at an out-of-state clinic. Scott paid thousands of dollars for the evaluation, which determined that he should submit to state monitoring for five years, attend an inpatient treatment program for at least six months and “detox” off of buprenorphine. The cost of the treatment, he was informed, could be as much as $30,000.
Scott was allowed to seek a second opinion from an in-state clinic. But it, too, recommended he stop using his medication. Scott s longtime doctor emphatically disagreed with the recommendations, according to the Justice Department letter and records reviewed by NBC News.
Even though both evaluating clinics found no negative symptoms that affect his ability to practice law or in any deficiencies in legal or employment performance, wrote Thomas J. Jaworski, the U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee, they nonetheless disapproved of his use of buprenorphine based on their own, unfounded stereotypes about the medication.
The Justice Department also found discrimination occurred in a second case when the Tennessee organizations imposed a similar pattern of onerous requirements on another lawyer, identified as C.B., who had undergone addiction treatment more than 10 years before he passed the bar exam.
Like Scott, they imposed burdensome requirements on him that came at significant economic harm, including that he pay for an out-of-state evaluation.
He was ultimately allowed to get his law license but with strict conditions, including that he submit to random drug testing, provide all records of his mental health treatment and attend a four-day-a-week outpatient drug treatment program. He lost his job after he told his employer about the drug treatment program requirement, according to the Justice Department findings. That was not all he lost.
His therapist refused to send detailed treatment records to the lawyers assistance program and instead asked to send only attendance records. When the program insisted, the therapist resigned from treating him.
As a result, C.B. lost his job, and his therapist, Jaworski wrote.
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