The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has published a proposed rule that would revise the agency’s existing regulations under the 2008 Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) to explicitly allow employers to offer employees financial or other inducements based on a spouse’s participation in a corporate wellness program.
Such a clarification is necessary, the EEOC explains, because the existing GINA regulations can reasonably be interpreted as barring the acquisition of information about a spouse’s health status in connection with the offer of any wellness participation reward or incentive.
Title II of GINA, which is enforced by EEOC, broadly prohibits employers from acquiring an individual’s genetic information; however, one exception does allow such acquisition in connection with a voluntary employee wellness program.
Consistent with the EEOC’s recently proposed regulations on wellness programs under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), under the agency’s GINA proposal, any wellness program that requests an individual’s genetic information would have to be “reasonably designed to promote health or prevent disease,” meaning that the program has a reasonable chance of improving participants’ health or preventing disease and (1) is not overly “burdensome,” (2) is not a subterfuge for violating GINA or any other EEO law; or (3) does not employ a “highly suspect” method for achieving health results.