NORTON, Va. – You’re a manager in a small company, and one of your employees posts a prayer request on his Facebook status: His grandfather is suffering from prostate cancer.
In an effort to be a dutiful prayer warrior and a sympathetic boss, you forward the request to your e-mail prayer list.
In doing so, you’ve broken the law, said Matthew Davidson, a Johnson City, Tenn., lawyer who specializes in labor and employment law, during a presentation Wednesday about GINA, the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act.
Coordinated by Davidson’s firm, Baker Donelson, and the Wise County Chamber of Commerce, the presentation was attended mostly by human resources professionals seeking guidance on handling the new law in the workplace.
GINA, which took effect in November, is the nation’s newest anti-discrimination law and still has regulations to be quantified and cases to be litigated before its meaning is fully understood, Davidson said.
What is clear, he said, is that the law is very broad, and even inadvertent disclosure of genetic information by an employer is a crime.
“Genetic information” includes such things as the illnesses of fourth-degree relatives, such as great-great-grandparents or cousins once removed, he said.
“That’s basically everybody in Wise County … or Washington County, for that matter,” Davidson said. “We’re all related. We live in rural communities.”
Steven Trent, also a partner with Baker Donelson in Johnson City, said the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is still working out the final regulations to implement the law, but is nearing the end of that process.
Trent said its main focus is to eliminate discrimination by employers and insurers based on genetic information.
“Congress decided that sort of thing is feasible enough and will become more and more realistic over time such that we needed to protect against it,” Trent said.
With limited exceptions, he said, GINA prohibits employers and insurers from collecting genetic information, adjusting health insurance premiums for a group based on genetic information, committing employment-related discrimination based on genetic information and disclosing the information to others.
dmccown@bristolnews.com | (276) 791-0701
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