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EEOC Issues New Workplace Guidance Regarding COVID-19 Testing

On July 12, 2022, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) – the agency which investigates and enforces federal antidiscrimination laws in the workplace – updated its guidance across several different areas relating to COVID-19 and the workplace, including when employees can be required to undergo COVID-19 testing, reasonable accommodations, and parameters around mandatory vaccination programs.

The EEOC’s prior guidance stated that conducting mandatory worksite COVID-19 testing always met the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”) standard that any mandatory medical test be “job related and consistent with business necessity.” The new guidance states that going forward, COVID-19 workplace testing is no longer automatically compliant with this ADA standard. Instead, employers will now need to assess whether testing is job-related and consistent with business necessity based on current pandemic and individual workplace circumstances.

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