EEOC Sues Ollie's and MedStar in Two ADA Hiring Cases

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced two separate disability discrimination lawsuits on September 23, 2026, one against discount retailer Ollie's Bargain Outlet in federal court in Dallas and one against MedStar Health and a member hospital in federal court in Maryland. Both complaints target the hiring stage.

Information last verified on September 24, 2026. This is a developing story; we update it as the record changes.

Status: The EEOC announced both lawsuits on September 23, 2026; neither press release states the date the complaint was filed. The allegations are unproven, neither employer has answered, and no court has ruled as of September 24, 2026.

Jurisdiction scope: Both cases arise under Title I of the federal Americans with Disabilities Act, which applies nationwide to covered employers. The Ollie's case sits in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Dallas Division, and the MedStar case in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, Southern Division. Nothing here turns on Texas or Maryland state law.

What Happened

Both announcements were posted by the EEOC on September 23, 2026, from different district offices.

The Ollie's Bargain Outlet complaint

The EEOC's Dallas District Office filed U.S. EEOC v. Ollie's Bargain Outlet, Inc., No. 3:26-cv-03222-B, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Dallas Division. According to the agency's announcement, Ollie's "refused to hire a profoundly deaf applicant at its distribution warehouse in Lancaster, Texas because of her disability and subjected her to an overtly discriminatory qualification standard."

The EEOC alleges that in May 2025 the applicant, who the agency says "had several years of experience working in warehouse roles with comparable duties," was turned down because of her profound deafness. The complaint also challenges a standing policy rather than a single decision. The EEOC alleges Ollie's applied "a physical qualification standard requiring its workers in certain distribution warehouse positions to have the ability to hear, a requirement that intentionally screens out and tends to screen out individuals who are deaf or hearing impaired."

Acting EEOC Dallas District Regional Attorney Ronald L. Phillips tied the filing to the calendar, noting that "September 25 marks the 18-year anniversary of the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act of 2008, which clarified that Congress intended for the ADA to provide disabled workers, including deaf and hearing-impaired individuals, with broad coverage and protection."

Dallas District Office Director Travis Nicholson framed the agency's theory of the case in terms of assumptions rather than evidence, saying that "some employers rely on stereotypes, myths and unfounded fears about deaf workers and their disabilities rather than accurate, individualized information about their abilities." Those are the EEOC's characterizations of conduct it has alleged but not yet proven. Lancaster sits in Dallas County, and workers there are covered by the same baseline rules described on our overview of Texas at-will employment, which federal antidiscrimination statutes limit.

The MedStar Health complaint

The EEOC's Baltimore Field Office, part of the agency's Philadelphia District, filed U.S. EEOC v. MedStar Health Inc., et al., Case No. 1:26-cv-03585-TDC, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, Southern Division. The defendants named are MedStar Health, Inc. and, per the body of the EEOC's announcement, MedStar Southern Maryland Hospital Center in Clinton, Maryland. The EEOC's own headline for the release renders the hospital's name as "MedStar Southern Maryland Health Center."

The EEOC alleges that in March 2024 MedStar extended a job offer for an admitting registrar position, the applicant accepted, and MedStar then "subjected the applicant to medical examinations and inquiries, including requiring him to undergo an occupational health evaluation, respond to medical inquiries, and otherwise comply with medical examination and inquiry requirements."

What happened next is the core of the claim. According to the EEOC, after discovering that the applicant is disabled, MedStar used the results of those examinations and inquiries against him, "including denying him medical clearance to work and demanding that he stop receiving intravenous treatment for his disability." The agency alleges MedStar then denied him reasonable accommodations, revoked the job offer, and refused to hire him.

Debra M. Lawrence, regional attorney for the EEOC's Philadelphia District, stated the agency's position on the exam itself: "Where an employer chooses to require an applicant to undergo medical examinations and inquiries, and to condition employment on the results of such examinations, the employer must use information gathered during that process in accordance with the law." Karen McDonough, acting director of the Baltimore Field Office, said the agency "is committed to enforcing the ADA and fulfilling the statute's promise of equal employment opportunity for individuals with disabilities."

In both matters, the EEOC states it filed suit only "after first attempting to reach a pre-litigation settlement through its administrative conciliation process." Maryland is also an at-will state, and the general rule there is summarized in our guide to Maryland at-will employment. At-will status does not authorize a hiring decision that federal law prohibits.

What the Law Actually Says

The two complaints are useful together because they run on different tracks of the same statute. Neither is the ordinary "fired because of a disability" case.

Track one: a qualification standard that screens people out

The Ollie's allegations sit in 42 U.S.C. 12112(b)(6), which defines discrimination to include "using qualification standards, employment tests or other selection criteria that screen out or tend to screen out an individual with a disability or a class of individuals with disabilities unless the standard, test or other selection criteria, as used by the covered entity, is shown to be job-related for the position in question and is consistent with business necessity."

Two features of that text matter. First, the trigger is "screen out or tend to screen out," so a facially neutral requirement can violate the provision without any proof of hostility toward a specific applicant. Second, the burden structure is unusual. Once a standard screens people out, the employer carries the justification. Under 42 U.S.C. 12113(a), it "may be a defense" that the standard "has been shown to be job-related and consistent with business necessity, and such performance cannot be accomplished by reasonable accommodation."

That last clause is easy to miss and it is doing real work. Even a genuinely job-related requirement does not end the analysis if a reasonable accommodation would let the person meet the underlying need. In the EEOC's January 2023 guidance on hearing disabilities in the workplace, the agency lists accommodations commonly used in exactly this setting, including visual alerts, vibrating pagers, hearing aid compatible equipment, text-based communication systems, and video remote interpreting.

Employers sometimes point to a safety rationale. The ADA permits that, but narrowly. Under 42 U.S.C. 12113(b), qualification standards "may include a requirement that an individual shall not pose a direct threat to the health or safety of other individuals in the workplace," and 42 U.S.C. 12111(3) defines direct threat as "a significant risk to the health or safety of others that cannot be eliminated by reasonable accommodation." The EEOC's implementing regulation at 29 C.F.R. 1630.2(r) is broader in one respect and stricter in another: it reaches "a significant risk of substantial harm to the health or safety of the individual or others," but it requires that the determination "be based on an individualized assessment of the individual's present ability to safely perform the essential functions of the job," resting on "a reasonable medical judgment that relies on the most current medical knowledge and/or on the best available objective evidence." The regulation then lists four factors: duration of the risk, nature and severity of the potential harm, likelihood that the harm will occur, and imminence of the harm.

A blanket rule applied to a job category is, by construction, not an individualized assessment. That is the gap the EEOC says exists in the Ollie's matter.

Track two: post-offer medical exams and what may be done with the results

The MedStar allegations run through 42 U.S.C. 12112(d). Before an offer, 12112(d)(2)(A) bars an employer from conducting "a medical examination or make inquiries of a job applicant as to whether such applicant is an individual with a disability or as to the nature or severity of such disability." The employer may still ask, under 12112(d)(2)(B), about "the ability of an applicant to perform job-related functions."

After a conditional offer, the rules change. Section 12112(d)(3) allows an employer to require a medical examination and to condition the offer on the results, provided that "all entering employees are subjected to such an examination regardless of disability," that the records are kept confidential and separate, and, critically, that "the results of such examination are used only in accordance with this subchapter." That final condition is the hinge of the EEOC's MedStar theory: requiring the exam can be lawful while the use made of its results is not.

The EEOC's regulation spells this out. Under 29 C.F.R. 1630.14(b)(3), post-offer "medical examinations conducted in accordance with this section do not have to be job-related and consistent with business necessity. However, if certain criteria are used to screen out an employee or employees with disabilities as a result of such an examination or inquiry, the exclusionary criteria must be job-related and consistent with business necessity, and performance of the essential job functions cannot be accomplished with reasonable accommodation as required in this part."

Read together with the direct threat rule, that is a demanding path for an employer that withdraws an offer on medical grounds. The accommodation duty itself comes from 42 U.S.C. 12112(b)(5)(A), which makes it discrimination to fail to make "reasonable accommodations to the known physical or mental limitations of an otherwise qualified individual with a disability who is an applicant or employee, unless such covered entity can demonstrate that the accommodation would impose an undue hardship on the operation of the business of such covered entity."

None of this establishes that either employer did anything unlawful. It describes the framework the EEOC says applies and the showings each side would have to make.

Analysis: Why This Matters

The following is analysis from the Recording Law Editorial Team.

The pairing is worth noticing because the two failure modes the EEOC describes are the ones most likely to be invisible from inside a company.

A qualification standard of the sort alleged in the Ollie's complaint fails quietly and at scale. If a job requisition carries an "ability to hear" line, no individual manager ever makes a decision that looks like discrimination; the applicant simply never advances. The alleged defect is not in any one interview, it is in a template. That also explains why the EEOC framed the claim around the standard as well as the single hiring decision, and why the statutory text reaches criteria that "tend to screen out" rather than requiring proof of intent.

The post-offer scenario alleged against MedStar fails in a different way. There, the examination itself is something the ADA plainly permits, which is exactly what makes the step afterward easy to get wrong. An occupational health function can be run correctly, uniformly, and confidentially, and the legal problem can still arise entirely in what the hiring side does with the output. The EEOC's allegation that MedStar demanded the applicant stop his intravenous treatment is striking on this point, because if proven it would describe an employer setting a condition on medical care rather than on job performance. The regulation on post-offer exams anticipated precisely this split: the exam is unconditioned, the exclusion drawn from it is not.

Both complaints also land in the same doctrinal place in the end, which is the individualized assessment. A hearing requirement stated as a category and a medical clearance denial stated as a category are the same move. The ADA's structure is built to force the question back to this applicant, this job, these essential functions, and this accommodation.

One caution about reading either case as a trend. The EEOC announces suits routinely and the timing of two ADA filings on one day is not by itself evidence of a policy shift. What the filings do show, reliably, is which theories the agency is prepared to litigate.

How This Affects You

Nothing below is a prediction about these cases or advice about anyone's particular situation.

If you are an applicant. The ADA's protections attach at the application stage, not just after hire. Under 42 U.S.C. 12112(b)(6), a qualification standard that screens out or tends to screen out people with a disability is unlawful unless it is shown to be job-related for the position in question and consistent with business necessity, and under 42 U.S.C. 12113(a) that defense also requires showing the performance at issue cannot be accomplished by reasonable accommodation. The EEOC's regulation at 29 C.F.R. 1630.2(r) further requires an individualized assessment rather than a determination applied to a job category. The pre-offer and post-offer distinction in 42 U.S.C. 12112(d) is also worth understanding, since the point at which a medical question is asked changes the legal rules that govern it. Pre-employment screening has its own overlapping federal and state layers, which we cover in our guide to background check laws.

If you are an employer. The two complaints describe hazards at opposite ends of the hiring funnel. On the front end, standing physical qualification standards carried in job descriptions are the kind of thing that no one revisits for years, and 42 U.S.C. 12112(b)(6) applies to a standard "as used by the covered entity," not as intended. On the back end, a compliant post-offer examination process does not carry its compliance forward into the decision made from its results; 29 C.F.R. 1630.14(b)(3) treats those as separate questions.

On deadlines and process. Federal employment discrimination claims run through the EEOC's administrative process before most private suits can be filed, and the charge-filing windows are short. Anyone weighing a claim should speak with a licensed employment attorney in their state about their own facts rather than reasoning from a filed complaint. Broader context on the default employment rules that antidiscrimination statutes override is in our at-will employment hub.

This article is general legal information, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. The allegations described here are unproven. If you believe you have experienced disability discrimination in hiring, consult a licensed employment attorney in your jurisdiction about your specific circumstances.

Related articles

• At-Will Employment by State covers the default employment rule that federal antidiscrimination statutes limit.
• Texas at-will employment laws for the state where the Ollie's case was filed.
• Maryland at-will employment laws for the state where the MedStar case was filed.
• Background check laws explains the wider rules on pre-employment screening.

Last updated: 2026-09-24. This is a developing story; details verified as of 2026-09-24.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do these two lawsuits mean Ollie's Bargain Outlet and MedStar Health broke the law?

No. Both matters are EEOC complaints announced on September 23, 2026, and a complaint contains allegations, not findings. Neither employer has answered and no court has ruled as of September 24, 2026. The EEOC states it filed both suits after first attempting to reach a pre-litigation settlement through its administrative conciliation process.

Can an employer require the ability to hear for a warehouse job?

It depends on the job and how the requirement is used. Under 42 U.S.C. 12112(b)(6), a qualification standard that screens out or tends to screen out people with disabilities is unlawful unless the employer shows it is job-related for the position in question and consistent with business necessity, and under 42 U.S.C. 12113(a) that defense also requires showing the performance at issue cannot be accomplished by reasonable accommodation. A requirement applied across a job category rather than assessed for the individual applicant is the pattern the EEOC challenged in the Ollie's complaint.

Is a post-offer medical examination legal under the ADA?

Yes, within limits. Section 12112(d)(3) of Title 42 permits an employer to require a medical examination after a job offer and to condition the offer on the results, but only if all entering employees are examined regardless of disability, the records are kept confidential and separate, and the results are used only in accordance with the statute. Before an offer, 42 U.S.C. 12112(d)(2)(A) generally prohibits disability-related medical examinations and inquiries.

If the exam itself is allowed, what makes using the results unlawful?

The EEOC's regulation at 29 C.F.R. 1630.14(b)(3) states that post-offer examinations do not themselves have to be job-related and consistent with business necessity, but that any exclusionary criteria applied to screen someone out based on the results must be job-related and consistent with business necessity, and the essential job functions must not be performable with reasonable accommodation. That separation between a lawful exam and an unlawful exclusion is the framework the EEOC invoked in the MedStar matter.

What is the direct threat standard and does it cover risk to the worker's own health?

Under 42 U.S.C. 12111(3), direct threat means a significant risk to the health or safety of others that cannot be eliminated by reasonable accommodation, and 42 U.S.C. 12113(b) allows a qualification standard requiring that an individual not pose such a threat to other individuals in the workplace. The EEOC's regulation at 29 C.F.R. 1630.2(r) defines it as a significant risk of substantial harm to the health or safety of the individual or others, and requires an individualized assessment based on reasonable medical judgment using the most current medical knowledge or best available objective evidence, weighing duration, nature and severity, likelihood, and imminence of the harm.

Which courts are hearing these cases?

The Ollie's matter, No. 3:26-cv-03222-B, is in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Dallas Division. The MedStar matter, Case No. 1:26-cv-03585-TDC, is in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, Southern Division. Both arise under Title I of the federal Americans with Disabilities Act, which applies nationwide to covered employers.

Does at-will employment in Texas or Maryland change the analysis?

No. At-will status describes the default rule for ending an employment relationship without cause; it does not permit a hiring or firing decision that a federal statute prohibits. Both of these matters concern refusals to hire under the ADA, and the at-will doctrine is not a defense to a federal antidiscrimination claim.

What accommodations does the EEOC say are common for deaf or hard of hearing workers?

The EEOC's January 2023 guidance on hearing disabilities in the workplace lists examples including visual alerts, vibrating pagers, hearing aid compatible equipment, text-based communication systems, video remote interpreting, adjustments to the physical work area, and reassignment to a vacant position. The guidance also notes that an employer may not rely on a federal safety requirement that does not actually apply to the position in question.