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QUESTION: We discovered within the interview course of {that a} high job candidate’s youngster has a critical incapacity. Our main medical plan covers workers and their dependents, and we’re involved that the kid’s situation will considerably improve prices underneath the plan. Is it permissible underneath the Individuals with Disabilities Act (ADA) and different legal guidelines to situation a job provide on not enrolling the kid within the plan?
ANSWER: The motion you describe seemingly violates the ADA’s affiliation provision. You might be most likely aware of the ADA provisions that prohibit an employer from discriminating towards a certified particular person with a incapacity in “job utility procedures, the hiring, development, or discharge of workers, worker compensation, job coaching, and different phrases, situations, and privileges of employment.” However the ADA additionally prohibits discrimination towards workers and job candidates due to their relationship or affiliation with one other particular person who has a incapacity. Specifically, the ADA expressly offers that the prohibition towards discrimination encompasses excluding or in any other case denying equal jobs or advantages due to the identified incapacity of a person with whom the worker or job applicant is thought to have a relationship or affiliation. This affiliation provision prohibits employers from denying an worker dependent well being protection as a result of the worker’s dependent has a incapacity when dependent protection is mostly accessible to different workers.
EEOC steerage relating to the affiliation provision consists of examples related to your scenario (see our Checkpoint article). In a single instance, an employer that provides medical insurance to its workers’ dependents determines that offering protection to a job applicant’s partner will improve medical insurance prices as a result of the partner has a incapacity. In accordance with the steerage, an ADA violation will happen if, primarily based on the elevated prices, the employer provides the applicant the job however with out the good thing about dependent medical insurance, or decides to not rent the applicant in any respect.
This plan of action additionally raises considerations underneath different legal guidelines, together with HIPAA’s nondiscrimination provisions, which prohibit group well being plans and insurers from discriminating with regard to eligibility or premium contributions primarily based on well being components. For extra info, see EBIA’s Group Well being Plan Mandates handbook at Part XX.H (“ADA: Discrimination Primarily based on Relationship or Affiliation”); see additionally EBIA’s HIPAA Portability, Privateness & Safety handbook at Part XI.C (“Nondiscrimination Guidelines for Eligibility and Advantages”).
Contributing Editors: EBIA Employees.
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