The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is seeking to block Honeywell Inc. from requiring employees and their spouses to undergo testing for smoking, obesity and other conditions–or face penalties of up to $4,000 annually each.
Compulsory biometric testing of employees and their spouses, if covered by the company’s health benefit plan, would violate the American with Disabilities Act and the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act, the EEOC said in a lawsuit filed in late October in the U.S. District Court in Minneapolis on behalf of two employees.
The EEOC seeks a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction against the testing requirement for the 2015 benefit year.
Employees would be effectively “forced to take an unlawful examination,” after which they “cannot ‘unring the bell,’” the federal agency said in its filing. The testing “is not job-related or consistent with business necessity.”
If employees or their spouses don’t take the tests, which include a blood draw, they would lose tax-free health savings account worth up to $1,500 and face health-plan surcharges of up to $2,500, the filing said.
The EEOC also said the company initially told employees it would use the results to impose “goals” for reducing risk factors, such as blood pressure, but has since indefinitely postponed this part of the program.
Honeywell said in a statement on its website that “incentives” to undergo tests-—the results of which it does not see–are compliant with the Affordable Care and Health Insurance Portability and Affordability acts.
“No Honeywell employee has ever been denied healthcare coverage or disciplined in any way as a result of their voluntary decision not to participate in our wellness programs” the company said in the statement.
“Honeywell wants its employees to be well informed about their health status not only because it promotes their wellbeing, but also because we don’t believe it’s fair to the employees who do work to lead healthier lifestyles to subsidize the healthcare premiums for those who do not,” it said.
