EEOC Sues Bollinger Shipyards Over Blanket Ban on Suboxone Users

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued Bollinger Shipyards on September 30, alleging that the shipbuilder withdrew job offers from five experienced applicants at its Pascagoula, Mississippi, yard because they had been prescribed Suboxone, a medication used to treat opioid addiction, without ever determining whether the drug affected their ability to do the work.

The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi, names Bollinger Shipyards, LLC and its subsidiary Bollinger Mississippi Shipbuilder, LLC, and says the companies violated the Americans with Disabilities Act as well as the Civil Rights Act of 1991. Bollinger describes itself as a marine construction, repair and conversion company employing more than 300 workers across ten shipyards along the Mississippi and Louisiana coasts.

Five offers, one stated reason

According to the EEOC, the companies extended offers to five highly qualified and experienced applicants between October 2024 and February 2025 for jobs at the Pascagoula facility. Each offer was withdrawn, the agency says, based solely on the potential side effects listed for medications the applicants disclosed — and without any effort to confirm whether the applicants actually experienced those side effects.

The hiring process required each candidate to complete a post-offer, pre-employment examination at a third-party medical clinic, where they had to disclose the medications they had been legally prescribed and provide their medical records. The agency alleges the clinic staff never verified the nature of the prescriptions: whether each candidate currently took everything listed in their records, whether any dose was taken during work hours, what side effects — if any — they had experienced, or whether the applicants believed they could handle the safety-sensitive duties of the job.

Clinic personnel also never checked the box on the examination report indicating that a candidate posed a direct threat to themselves or others, the EEOC says. Under the ADA, an employer that screens out a worker because of a disability must be able to show the exclusion is justified by a genuine safety risk, a judgment that is supposed to rest on individualized assessment rather than assumptions about a diagnosis or a drug's label.

HR Dive reported that the suit also alleges the parent company's human resources director implemented a blanket ban on Suboxone use for positions classified as safety-sensitive.

"Employers cannot base hiring decisions on blanket assumptions about an applicant who takes a prescription medication without inquiring into whether or not the individual experiences any side effects," Linda Sales-Long, acting director of the EEOC's Birmingham District, said in the agency's announcement. "Employers cannot rely solely on drug manufacturers' listing of potential side effects as proof that an applicant cannot safely perform a job."

Marsha Rucker, the Birmingham District's regional attorney, said the commission is committed to enforcing workers' right to be evaluated on their actual abilities rather than on stereotypes or generalizations.

Why buprenorphine sits at the center of the dispute

Suboxone is the brand name for a combination of buprenorphine and naloxone, one of three medications approved in the United States for opioid use disorder and the most widely prescribed. Buprenorphine blunts withdrawal and craving and has a ceiling effect that makes it substantially safer than full opioid agonists, which is why public health agencies have pushed to expand its use during the fentanyl era.

Its package labeling lists drowsiness and sedation among possible side effects, the kind of language that gives employers cover for broad exclusions. Federal guidance has increasingly pushed in the other direction: the Labor Department has told employers that a worker in recovery or on prescribed medication is generally entitled to an individualized evaluation, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's recent fact sheet on workplace overdose preparedness directs employers toward recognizing and reversing overdoses rather than screening out the people at risk of one.

The case also lands in the middle of a wider policy fight over how the workplace treats medication-assisted treatment. The administration's recovery initiative has emphasized jobs and workforce participation as an outcome of treatment, while regulators at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Labor Department have focused on the employers who shut the door first.

A repeat defendant

This is not the agency's first action against the same company. The EEOC sued Bollinger over similar conduct in September 2025, and the commission's announcement of the new filing refers to the earlier case as a continuing pattern rather than an isolated hiring decision.

That history could matter to the outcome. Under the ADA, a pattern of excluding applicants on the basis of prescribed medication — rather than a single questionable medical review — tends to be treated as a systemic screening practice, and the commission has said it will press for changes to the underlying process, not only relief for the five individuals.

Bollinger did not respond to a request for comment from HR Dive before publication and had not issued a public statement at the time of this article.

What the case says about hiring and recovery

Steady employment is one of the strongest predictors of sustained recovery, and federal health agencies have spent years trying to widen access to buprenorphine for the millions of Americans with opioid use disorder. A hiring rule that screens out anyone taking it can narrow the very path that treatment is supposed to open.

For people in treatment, employment protections under the ADA do not guarantee a job, and employers can still disqualify a candidate who genuinely cannot perform essential duties safely. What the law requires is that the determination be made about the person — their dose, their side effects, their actual job tasks — rather than about the medication's label.

The commission's complaint seeks relief for the five applicants named in the case. No hearing date has been set. People seeking help for opioid use disorder can find treatment programs and medication providers across the country.