The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled recently that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has until January 1, 2019 to revise it wellness plan regulations under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) before its existing wellness regulations will be vacated.
The court’s ruling comes in conjunction with a lawsuit brought by AARP challenging the existing regulations on the ground that they were inconsistent with requirements of the ADA and GINA that wellness plan participation be voluntary. The court in an earlier ruling agreed with AARP that the EEOC had not provided a reasoned explanation to justify the participation incentives contained in the regulations. The court sent the regulations back to the EEOC for reconsideration, while allowing them to remain in effect until the EEOC issued new regulations. AARP then asked the court to vacate the existing regulations as of January 1, 2018.
The court’s December 20 ruling is in response to the AARP’s request to vacate the existing regulations. Contrary to some published reports, while the court did in fact vacate the regulations, that will not occur until January 1, 2019, and not January 1, 2018 as AARP requested, in essence giving the EEOC one year to come up with revised regulations while the existing regulations remain in effect. As a result, employers should be able to rely on the existing regulations for at least another year while they decide whether they want to make any adjustments to their wellness program incentives in light of the issues raised in the AARP litigation.
A copy of the court’s December 20 decision in AARP v. EEOC is available here.
Members of the Center for Workplace Compliance (CWC) can read more here.