The EEOC has sued Bollinger Shipyards, alleging the company rescinded job offers after learning what prescription medications applicants take. The agency’s complaint says five applicants at the Pascagoula, Mississippi shipyard received offers between October 2024 and February 2025, and that the offers were withdrawn based solely on potential side effects, without confirming whether the applicants experienced them. The allegations are the agency’s, not a court’s finding, and the case is pending in the Southern District of Mississippi.
The EEOC says it previously sued Bollinger for similar conduct in September 2025. Acting Birmingham District Director Linda Sales-Long said: “Employers cannot rely solely on drug manufacturers’ listing of potential side effects as proof that an applicant cannot safely perform a job.”
For HR teams, the suit sits at the conditional-offer stage that our earlier analysis of offer-stage disability suits mapped, and it adds a second kind of screen to the physical tests covered in our brief on tests at hire and return from leave. A medical review step can feel like diligence, yet the agency’s stated position is that potential side effects have to be checked against the individual applicant.
The practical gap is in how the review is run. Where a clinic or vendor sits between the applicant and the hiring manager, the manager may see only a fit or no-fit result. If the output is a bare result with no record of what was asked about actual side effects and the actual duties of the job, the employer cannot show an individualized assessment took place.
The check worth running now is simple: pull the last ten offers that were withdrawn after a medical review and read the file. Look for the specific job tasks assessed, the questions put to the applicant about their own experience with the medication, and who made the final call. Where the file holds only a vendor’s category label, rewrite the process before the next offer goes out.
