While Bragdon takes a broad view of disability and interference with a major life activity, Albertsons, Inc. v. Kirkingburg significantly narrows the application of the ADA when the condition at issue is less threatening than HIV. Plaintiff is a truck driver with such severe amblyopia (weak eye) that his effective vision in the affected eye is 20/200 and he does not have binocular vision. Department of Transportation (DOT) regulations require that commercial truck drivers have 20/40 vision in each eye and effective binocular vision so that their depth perception is not hindered. Despite his weak eye and monocular vision, plaintiff had been mistakenly certified as meeting DOT standards and had been driving for ten years. Defendant hired plaintiff as a truck driver based on this improper certification.

Plaintiff was injured on the job and took a short medical leave. During his return to work fitness exam, it was discovered that he did not meet DOT standards and was not qualified for a commercial truck driver's job. Plaintiff applied to DOT for a waiver of the vision standards under an experimental program. DOT did not grant the waiver at that time and defendant fired him. DOT later granted the waiver, notwithstanding plaintiff's poor vision, but defendant refused to rehire him, based on reliance on the basic DOT regulations. Plaintiff sued under the ADA and defendant moved for summary judgment on the sole issue that plaintiff was not "otherwise qualified" to be truck driver, with or without accomodation.

District court granted defendant' motion for summary judgment, finding that meeting DOT standards was an essential job function. The court held that defendant was not bound to accept the DOT waiver because it was an experimental program and did not have the force of law, thus it did not alter the basic DOT vision standards. On appeal, defendant added the contention that plaintiff was not disabled under the ADA. The court of appeals reversed, first holding that plaintiff was disabled because his monocular vision was different from the norm and thus must affect a major life activity. The court then found that defendant had no right to reject the DOT waiver because it represented a finding by the DOT that plaintiff could safely work as a truck driver.

The United States Supreme Court began its review of the case with the issue of whether plaintiff was disabled under the ADA. The Court accepted that plaintiff met the first program of the test - a physical impairment - but questioned the second prong - does the physical impairment affect a major life activity? It rejected the appeals court's simplistic conclusion that: "It was enough to warrant a finding of disability ... that the plaintiff could see out of only one eye: the manner in which he performed the major life activity of seeing was different." The court rejected this transformation of the "significant restriction" standard into a standard based on finding no more than a difference between the functioning of persons with and without the physical impairment. In particular, the court found that the appeals court ignored the issue of mitigation and compensation for the impairment, the issue at the heart of two companion cases decided at the same time. On this issue, the court found that the plaintiff would have to make a specific showing of how he individually was restricted in a major life activity by this impairment. (The court did indicate that it believed that plaintiff would not have difficulty in making this showing.)

The most important analysis in this case concerns the interplay between the DOT standards for vision and the significant risk exception in the ADA. As a first finding, the court ruled that if the government standard at issue, such as the vision standard, is mandatory with no applicable exceptions, then a plaintiff who does not meet the standard will be automatically deemed to not be "otherwise qualified" for job and thus without a remedy under the ADA. (This is a significant issue because there are many DOT and OSHA regulations that disqualify individuals with various physical impairments from certain jobs.) Does the defendant have to accept the DOT wavier, or can it demand that drivers meet the underlying standard?

The case turns to administrative law standards when the court analyzes whether the defendant must accept the waiver. The court found that the defendant did not have to accept the waiver because it was granted without any underlying data to show that it was safe to waive the core vision requirements. The court determined that since the original standards were based on a significant administrative record showing the risk of impaired drivers, the Secretary of DOT had no right to waive these without conducting the same type of factual inquiry. After a review of the history of the waiver program, the court found that it was only a method of gathering data on the problem - waive the standards and see how many accidents result. (The program was eventually struck in other litigation, Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety v. FHWA, 28 F.3d 1288, 1290 (C.A.D.C.1994).) The court found that defendant was not obliged to participate in the DOT's experiment by hiring a truck driver with a waiver, but could base its standards on the unwaived DOT vision requirements: "It is simply not credible that Congress enacted the ADA (before there was any waiver program) with the understanding that employers choosing to respect the Government's sole substantive visual acuity regulation in the face of an experimental waiver might be burdened with an obligation to defend the regulation's application according to its own terms."