Can I Be Forced To Participate In A Medical Screening?
According to the Americans with Disabilities Act, employers have limited rights when it comes to medical questions. An employer has no legal right to ask an employee or a job applicant whether they have a disability. Again, an employee may not answer medical questions or be forced to take a medical exam before an employer makes a job offer.
The processes and decisions to conduct medical screening for job applicants or employees are dictated by federal and state laws. Therefore, one needs to understand how to protect their legal rights regarding medical screening for any work-related aptness.
What You Need To Know In Any Medical Screening
When it comes to pre-employment or employment medical questions, inquiries, and exams, employees have legal rights protected by the law. Understanding these laws ensures your employer doesn’t take advantage of you. If your employer is forcing you to participate in medical screening, they may be doing so against the law. As such, you may consider getting legal advice from the best employment attorney in Orange County who can help protect your rights. The ADA strictly limits what an employer can do when it comes to getting employees’ medical information. In any case, if they obtain the information, it should be kept confidential. If your employer needs you to participate in medical screening, you need to know that:
· Your employer is only allowed to conduct medical screening in only limited circumstances listed under the ADA.
· Your employer should conduct medical screening only if he/she has a reasonable belief that you may not be able to perform your duties or you pose a health threat to yourself, other employees, or the public. For instance, you may have taken time off work to take care of a family member who had an infectious disease. Your employer may require you
to take a test to ensure your health is safe and don’t pose a threat to other employees.
· Your employer has no legal right to force you to engage in a medical screening or ask questions about your medical disability or condition. In such cases, some employers get to punish employees who refuse to participate in such programs. Medical screening programs should be offered voluntarily. However, an employer may provide a financial reward to anyone who participates.
As a general rule, any employer who wants to obtain an employee’s medical information should be limited to what is needed for determining when one is qualified for the job. Thus, the use of job applicant’s religion, national origin, sex, race, among other protected characteristics would be irrelevant when it comes to such job determinations. Therefore for any discrimination, one can use their protected characteristics as evidence that the employer had an intention to discriminate.
Medical Questions Or Inquiries
For any medical questions or inquiries, a job applicant should know that:
· If your employer is to ask medical questions, the law only allows them to condition a job offer to an applicant and answer such questions only if the process is to be done to every job applicant.
· If you get hired and start working, you are employer is only obligated to ask medical questions only if they are to facilitate your request for reasonable accommodation, or if your employer has a valid reason to believe that you may not perform your duties well due to your medical condition.
Where your employer obtains medical information, he/she should keep it confidential. It’s worth noting that no every medical condition can be kept confidential. Both federal and state laws exclude some conditions such as sexual behavior, condition emanating from the use of controlled substances, etc. Your medical information can only be relevant if it’s for a legitimate business reason.
Have Your Employer Forced You To Participate In A Medical Screening?
If your employer seems to ask medical questions that seem to intrigue your personal issues, this might be unlawful. He/she might be violating your privacy rights. To get justice, you can consider working with an employment lawyer. Courts usually make decisions for such cases based on a case by case. They use common sense to determine whether your employer was reasonable enough to ask the medical questions. Where it may seem the questions are not related to your employer’s business interest, you may be on safe grounds to legally pin your employer. Regardless of whether your employer conducted medical screening reasonably, he/she might be against the law if such is undertaken only to employees with disabilities.
Your employer could have requested you to complete a health screening assessment that seems intrusive to your family life. And could have taken an adverse action or penalized you for failure to participate. If this is the case, you may need to talk to an employment lawyer who will advise you on how the law limits him/her from such acts and what should be done to ensure justice prevails in your case.