A federal agency just cleared the way for employers to do their dirty work and enforce coronavirus vaccinations.
The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission released guidance that employers who require workers to receive the Wuhan Virus vaccine do not violate the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990, which prohibits employers from requiring “medical examinations like blood tests, breath analyses and blood-pressure screening” to obtain medical information on workers, the New York Times reported.
“If a vaccine is administered to an employee by an employer for protection against contracting COVID-19, the employer is not seeking information about an individual’s impairments or current health status and, therefore, it is not a medical examination,” the EEOC said.
There is a caveat, employers could get into hot water if they ask an employee if they have been vaccinated.
“Although the administration of vaccination is not a medical examination, pre-screening vaccination questions may implicate the ADA’s provision on disability-related inquiries, which are inquiries likely to elicit information about a disability. If the employer administers the vaccine, it must show that such pre-screening questions it asks employees are “job-related and consistent with business necessity.”
The EEOC is even giving employers a way out to deal with employees whose “religious belief, practice, or observance prevents” them from receiving the vaccine. According to their new ruling, employers must provide a “reasonable accommodation” for workers “unless it would pose an undue hardship under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.”
“If an employee cannot get vaccinated for COVID-19 because of a disability or sincerely held religious belief, practice, or observance, and there is no reasonable accommodation possible, then it would be lawful for the employer to exclude the employee from the workplace,” the EEOC said.
“This does not mean the employer may automatically terminate the worker,” the agency added.
The government is not going to mandate vaccinations they are going to force the private sector to do it for them.
