statnews | A little-noticed bill moving through Congress
would allow companies to require employees to undergo genetic testing or
risk paying a penalty of thousands of dollars, and would let
employers see that genetic and other health information.
Giving employers such power is now prohibited by
legislation including the 2008 genetic privacy and nondiscrimination law
known as GINA. The new bill gets around that landmark law by stating
explicitly that GINA and other protections do not apply when genetic
tests are part of a “workplace wellness” program.
The bill, HR 1313, was approved by a House
committee on Wednesday, with all 22 Republicans supporting it and all 17
Democrats opposed. It has been overshadowed by the debate over the
House GOP proposal to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act,
but the genetic testing bill is expected to be folded into a second
ACA-related measure containing a grab-bag of provisions that do not
affect federal spending, as the main bill does.
“What this bill would do is completely take away
the protections of existing laws,” said Jennifer Mathis, director of
policy and legal advocacy at the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, a
civil rights group. In particular, privacy and other protections for
genetic and health information in GINA and the 1990 Americans with
Disabilities Act “would be pretty much eviscerated,” she said.
Employers say they need the changes because those
two landmark laws are “not aligned in a consistent manner” with laws
about workplace wellness programs, as an employer group said in
congressional testimony last week.
