On May 28, 2021, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission updated its guidance on workplace COVID-19 vaccination issues under the federal EEO laws. The updated guidance is important for employers to consider in light of the recent CDC guidance relaxing restrictions for vaccinated persons, but not unvaccinated persons, and state and local workplace safety requirements that make a similar distinction.
To read the full text of this Duane Morris Alert, please visit the firm website.
In our December 15, 2020, Alert, we advised that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) would provide updates to its COVID-19 guidance, “What You Should Know About COVID-19 and the ADA, the Rehabilitation Act, and Other EEO Laws,” to address employer rights and responsibilities related to COVID-19 vaccination policies. Right after our Alert was issued, on December 16, 2020, the EEOC updated its COVID-19 guidance with questions and answers for employers who seek to have their employees inoculated against this deadly virus.
To read the full text of this Duane Morris Alert, please visit the firm website.
With the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine approved for emergency use authorization by the Food and Drug Administration and the CDC and approval of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine expected imminently, America is seeing light at the end of the very long tunnel that has been the pandemic. Accordingly, many employers have begun to consider whether they should have a mandatory COVID-19 vaccination policy to protect employees and return to some normalcy in the workplace. An employer’s decision to require employee COVID-19 inoculations as a condition of workplace entry raises a number of legal, evidentiary and practical issues.
Update: On December 16, 2020, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission released guidance on COVID-19 vaccinations, including employer mandates for the vaccine. Duane Morris will cover this development in an Alert to be published soon.
To read the full text of this Duane Morris Alert, please visit the firm website.
On June 11, 2020, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) released additional Q&As in “What You Should Know About COVID-19 and the ADA, the Rehabilitation Act, and Other EEO Laws.” As businesses reopen during the COVID-19 pandemic, employers continue to grapple with how to safely return employees to the workforce, particularly those employees with certain underlying conditions identified by the CDC, as well as pregnant employees and those over the age of 65.
To read the full text of this Duane Morris Alert, please visit the firm website.
For more than 50 years, the federal government has required larger employers to file an annual EEO-1 report containing demographic information of their workforce. However, on May 7, 2020, in recognition of the challenges that businesses across America are facing in the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission delayed the expected 2020 deadline to file the 2019 EEO-1 report until March 2021.
To read the full text of this Duane Morris Alert, please visit the firm website.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission continues to update its guidance regarding the interplay between COVID-19, the Americans with Disabilities Act and other EEO laws. Divided into seven sections, What You Should Know About COVID-19 and the ADA, the Rehabilitation Act, and Other EEO Laws addresses employers’ frequently asked questions on disability-related inquiries and medical exams, hiring and onboarding, reasonable accommodations and returning to work in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.
To read the full text of this Duane Morris Alert, please visit the firm website.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) updated its guidance on April 23 on the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and coronavirus, explaining that employers may screen employees for COVID-19. Any mandatory medical test must be job-related and consistent with business necessity, the EEOC explained. […]
Questions about testing are “increasingly on the minds of employers,” said Christopher Durham, an attorney with Duane Morris in Philadelphia. […]
In an April 17 update to the same guidance, the EEOC clarified what constitutes an undue hardship preventing an employer from reasonably accommodating an individual with a disability in a pandemic. The agency stated that “it may be significantly more difficult in this pandemic to conduct a needs assessment or to acquire certain items, and delivery may be impacted, particularly for employees who may be telecommuting.” […]
The factors impacting what constitutes an undue hardship are going to be motivated by a vastly different operational and financial reality for some businesses than was the case prior to the pandemic, said Linda Hollinshead, an attorney with Duane Morris in Philadelphia.
To read the full text of the article, including further commentary by Mr. Durham and Ms. Hollinshead, please visit the SHRM website.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) gave employers the green light to take employees’ temperatures to try and ward off the spread of the coronavirus in guidance updated March 18. But will taking temperatures really work?
“Generally, measuring an employee’s body temperature is a medical examination,” the EEOC stated. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) prohibits medical examinations unless they are job-related and consistent with business necessity.
Because the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and state and local health authorities have acknowledged community spread of COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the coronavirus, and have issued related precautions, “employers may measure employees’ body temperature. However, employers should be aware that some people with COVID-19 do not have a fever,” the agency stated. And some people with a fever do not have COVID-19. […]
Jonathan Segal, an attorney with Duane Morris in Philadelphia and New York City, said there may be an obligation to pay employees for time spent waiting to have their temperatures checked. […]
To read the full article, visit the SHRM website.
