TBA Law Blog


Posted by: Stacey Shrader Joslin on Dec 26, 2024

The U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) has found that two Tennessee agencies — the Tennessee Board of Law Examiners and the Tennessee Lawyers Assistance Program — discriminated against a lawyer who was denied his law license for nearly three years and forced to pay thousands of dollars for evaluations because he was using a medication to treat his opioid use disorder. According to NBC, the detailed public letter lays out how the organizations violated the Americans with Disabilities Act with “burdensome” actions based on “speculation and stigma” when they “forced [Derek Scott] to choose between his law license or continued treatment as prescribed as necessary by his treating physician.” Scott, who first passed the bar exam in 2021, was sworn into the Tennessee bar in January. The DOJ also found the agencies discriminated against another lawyer, identified as C.B., who had undergone addiction treatment more than 10 years before he passed the bar exam. NBC has been reporting on the stigma surrounding medication-assisted treatment.