LuzMaria Arroyo v. Volvo Group North America, LLC, dba Volvo Parts North America
SocialSecurity EmploymentDiscrimina
Whether the Seventh Circuit misapplied USERRA provisions and improperly relied on ADA standards in evaluating a disabled veteran's reemployment rights
QUESTIONS PRESENTED FOR REVIEW I. Whether the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit erred in in applying 38 U.S.C. § 4311 of the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act “USERRA”), the wrong provision, rather than 38 U.S.C. § 43138, the right provision, which applies to “a person who, ‘like Arroyo,’ has a disability incurred in, or aggravated during” her military service, and in so doing, endorsing the lower court’s decisions preventing Arroyo from offering at trial evidence of her post-traumatic stress disorder and subsequent treatment that ought to have been admitted so that Arroyo could keep her predeployment job — an entirely different analysis than that of the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”). Instead, the lower courts relied on the ADA to trump USERRA’s reemployment rights protections to the substantial prejudice of Arroyo, and every other USERRA plaintiff seeking reemployment after having been disabled in military service. II. Whether the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit erred in affirming the district court’s decision that Arroyo could not perform the essential functions of her position with or without reasonable accommodation and was thus not a _ qualified individual with a disability under the ADA, and thereby conflated the statutory frameworks for USERRA disability with ADA disability and working an injustice for large swaths of our American populace, both veterans and the disabled. i