Employment Litigation · Primary-source case analysis

Raytheon: A Neutral No-Rehire Policy Must Be Analyzed Under the Claim Actually Pleaded

By Aneeta Mishra and Timothy Chan

Published August 17, 2026

Raytheon Co. v. Hernandez arose when a long-serving employee who had resigned after a positive cocaine test later sought reemployment after rehabilitation and challenged the company’s no-rehire policy under the ADA.

The applicant returned after treatment and rehabilitation

Joel Hernandez applied more than two years after his forced resignation and submitted letters describing recovery. The decisionmaker testified that she rejected him under a general rule against rehiring people terminated for workplace misconduct and did not know of his addiction history.

Disparate treatment and disparate impact are different claims

Disparate treatment asks whether disability actually motivated the decision; disparate impact challenges a neutral practice that disproportionately harms a protected group. Each theory has distinct pleading and proof requirements.

The neutral policy satisfied the employer’s production burden

For the pleaded disparate-treatment theory, the no-rehire rule was a legitimate nondiscriminatory explanation. The remaining question was whether evidence could show that explanation was pretext and disability status actually drove the decision.

The case returned without a preferential-rehire holding

The Court vacated the Ninth Circuit’s judgment because it had imported disparate-impact reasoning into the treatment claim. It did not decide whether the ADA creates preferential rehire rights or whether a properly pleaded impact claim would succeed.

Key takeaways

• Identify whether the claim alleges motive, impact, or both.
• Preserve the no-rehire policy, its history, and consistent comparator applications.
• Document what the decisionmaker knew at the time of rejection.
• Plead and exhaust each theory under its own elements and defenses.