Connecticut Employment Lawyer & Attorney : Daniel Schwartz : Stamford, Hartford New Haven, CT

The U.S. House of Representatives, as expected, passed the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act this afternoon.  The bill, which had already been approved by the Senate, now moves on to the White House, where the President is expected to sign the bill.  The bill's summary and status can be found here.The roll call vote at 12:40 p.m. can be found here.   It passed overwhelmingly.  (Guess which Representative opposed it.)

The New York Times, through an AP report, has the immediate coverage:

Companies would no longer be able to use genetic information like a person's predisposition for breast cancer, sickle cell or diabetes to make insurance or job decisions under a bill passed by Congress on Thursday.

The House voted 414-1 for the legislation a week after it passed the Senate on a 95-0 vote. The bill would bar health insurance companies from using genetic information to set premiums or determine enrollment eligibility. Similarly, employers could not use genetic information in hiring, firing or promotion decisions.

As I noted earlier this week, this bill is not expected to have a significant impact in Connecticut where there is already legislation on the books prohibiting discrmination based on genetic information.

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Last week, while I was out on vacation, Congress acted on a bill that may have some interest in Connecticut. However, because Connecticut already has a similar bill already on the books, it will probably have a minor impact on employers.

The U.S. Senate approved of legislation that would prohibit genetic discrimination in the workplace.   As reported by the Manpower Employment Law Blog, The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) sailed through the Senate on a 95-0 vote.  A House vote is expected shortly; you can check on the bill status of H.R. 493 here. 
Among other things, GINA would:

• prohibit discrimination based on genetic information in hiring, firing, compensation and other employment decisions;
• prohibit employers from collecting genetic information through workplace genetic testing or other means, with very narrow exceptions (e.g., monitoring the effects of hazardous workplace exposures);
• prohibit health insurers and plans from requiring genetic testing and from discriminating based on genetic information in enrollment and premium-setting; and
• impose strict workplace confidentiality/disclosure rules on all genetic information.

Senator Christopher Dodd expressed his strong support for the bill and posted his comments to his website, which you can find here. 

However, for employers in Connecticut, this should be old news. Connecticut already has a law that prohibits discrimination based on genetic information so I don't anticipate that GINA, if passed, will a significant impact in Connecticut.  Conn. Gen. Stat. 46a-60(a)(11) states that it is illegal:

     (11) For an employer, by the employer or the employer's agent, for an employment agency, by itself or its agent, or for any labor organization, by itself or its agent: (A) To request or require genetic information from an employee, person seeking employment or member, or (B) to discharge, expel or otherwise discriminate against any person on the basis of genetic information. For the purpose of this subdivision, "genetic information" means the information about genes, gene products or inherited characteristics that may derive from an individual or a family member.

To be sure, GINA has some additional provisions that will need to be looked at by employers in Connecticut.  But none of it is all that dramatic; Connecticut employers may want to await final passage of GINA before updating their policies on this issue. 

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Several months ago, I posted on legislation pending before Congress called the ADA Restoration Act of 2007.  Today seems a particularly apt time for an update.

The U.S. House's Committee on Education and Labor is holding a hearing today on H.R. 3195.  The hearing is being webcast on its website here.  Several witnesses are slated to testify. 

Both SHRM and the American Association of People with Disabilities are portraying this time period as critical for consideration of the bill.  A vote on the bill could come up to the house, according to these advocates, sometime in February.  Whether the bill will pass appears up in the air as the bill lacks a sufficient number of co-sponsors to assure its passage in both houses.

George Lenard of the Employment Blawg shared his view on the Act as well.  It's worth checking out in full.  Here's a portion:

There have been some cases in which the definition of “disability” has been construed too narrowly, preventing individuals with quite substantial impairments from having their day in court.

But the definition as it now stands is a sound one, and the Supreme Court cases were correctly decided under this definition.

The problem has largely been one of bad lawyering. It has taken too long for lawyers representing plaintiffs in disability cases to learn that the threshold issue of meeting the definition of “disability” is absolutely critical, and requires extensive factual development, often with multiple expert witnesses.

SHRM’s position is excessively alarmist — although I agree the proposed law is unnecessary and I oppose it without qualification.

As I stated before, I'm not sure I agree with the use of the term "restoration".  Indeed, it's a dangerous road to go down by attempting look back to where we were 17 years ago in employment law and say the law isn't what we intended it to be.  The law -- as with all laws -- has evolved over time as "real-life" cases get interpreted. For example, does someone with MRSA qualify as a disability? Since MRSA wasn't even an issue 15 years ago, the law has to be interpreted to address this question. 

I would rather the backers of the bill engage in an intellectually honest debate of whether amendments to the ADA should be made rather than claim that they are merely "restoring" it.  The use of that type of loaded terminology (see, for example, "No Child Left Behind") does not add to the debate of whether the proposed amendments are a good or bad idea.

Indeed, an interesting article by The New York Times last week also asked whether some disabled people might actually be worse off with the passage of the ADA.  

Lastly, for those who are interested in more on the subject, the ReunifyGally Blog has been constant in its updates.

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A couple of weeks after President Bush's pocket veto of a defense bill that included expansion of FMLA for military leave, Congress has again passed a defense bill with the same FMLA provision.  President Bush is now expected to sign the measure because it does not contain certain language that he found objectionable (unrelated to FMLA) in the bill.

For a recap of the provisions, see my prior posts on the subject here, here and here. 

(H/T Alaska Employment Law)

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