For today's weekly cavnesHR newsletter, we are going to talk about the Genetic Information Non-Discrimination Act. This law was passed to keep companies from discriminating using genetics or genetics testing. An important part of this is what was happening in the past was companies, when they had employees or potential employees do a health insurance test. They were doing genetic testing and seeing what types of diseases that their future employee might be predisposed to.
For example, if the test came back that they were predisposed to cancer or some other type of disease. Which would then increase their health insurance premiums, so the companies would not hire them. The Courts found this to be discriminatory. So in a case back in 1988, Norman-Bloodsaw v. Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (135 F.3d 1260, 1269 (9th Cir. 1998)). This case emphasized that people have the right to genetic privacy.
So some more background on this. This had been happening for a while. For example, back in 1907, using genetics testing, the state of Indiana passed the first sterilization law. Also, although genetics have neutral markers, major genetic conditions and disorders are associated with particular racial and ethnic groups and genders. For example, sickle cell anemia is a disease that primarily affects African Americans. So state legislators were enacting discriminatory laws in these areas.
So Congress passed the Genetic Information Non Discrimination Act to do away with this. It is now illegal to use your future or current employees or potential employees genetic information, not to hire them. You cannot use a reason that if we hired this person, they probably will get this disease which will probably make our insurance premiums go up. This is now illegal and discriminatory. So just keep that in mind when hiring new people and doing your pre-employment checks.
Thanks for your time today and remember to be great every day.
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