HIMS AME false claim?

[flyingron]

Medical standards aren't criminal prosecutions. There's no 'ex post facto' protection against them being revised to your detriment. Just because the FAA wasn't hot to trot on DUI or Sleep Apnea or whatever doesn't mean they can't enforce it now.

Perhaps the standards should be revised, but you're not going to get it invalidated through armchair legal attempts. If petitioning for a rule change doesn't work (and it will be rejected out of hand unless you have some real data to back up your assertions) then getting congress involved (as it was for basic med) is the only way. Don't expect them to be too sympathetic to your cause either.

 

[Palmpilot]

...I was held accountable to a standard that I can't find anywhere or evidence of any legal precedent. only .20 in case law
I do hope that outside more of the obvious responses that will undoubtedly come back, someone can shed some substantive information.
and thank you to those that have pm'd

I'm not a lawyer, but it seems to me that the following portion of 14 CFR Part 67 gives the FAA's federal air surgeon a virtual blank check when it comes to deciding what standards to use:

No other organic, functional, or structural disease, defect, or limitation that the Federal Air Surgeon, based on the case history and appropriate, qualified medical judgment relating to the condition involved, finds -

(1) Makes the person unable to safely perform the duties or exercise the privileges of the airman certificate applied for or held; or

(2) May reasonably be expected, for the maximum duration of the airman medical certificate applied for or held, to make the person unable to perform those duties or exercise those privileges.​

That language appears in 67.113, 61.213, and 67.313 for first, second, and third class medical certificates, respectively.

Besides that, the FAA has their own definitions of "substance dependence" and "substance abuse" written into the regulations, in 67.107, 67.207, and 67.307. Blood alcohol levels are not even mentioned there.

I'm not saying that it's right, but it does seem to be the way it is.

 

[bigbird]

thanks for everyone's help, it has indeed been a positive experience for me to get some other perspectives.