The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) recently issued updated guidance stating that federal laws do not prevent an employer from requiring workers to be vaccinated. However, in some circumstances, equal employment opportunity (EEO) laws may require the employer to provide reasonable accommodations for employees who, because of disability or religious belief, choose not to receive a vaccine.
In those cases, an unvaccinated employee may be permitted to enter the workplace with a face mask, work at a social distance, or be given the opportunity to telework, assuming that is possible. This is in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
The guidelines also state that no federal law prevents or limits incentives that employers can offer employees to voluntarily take the vaccine. Employers that administer vaccines on-site may offer incentives as long as those incentives are not coercive.
Employers can request that employees provide confirmation of the COVID-19 vaccination status, but such information should be considered confidential pursuant to the ADA and should be kept separate from the employee personnel files. An employer can maintain a log of results related to temperature checks and can disclose the name of an employee to a public health agency when it learns that the employee has COVID-19. A staffing agency or contractor may also notify the employer and disclose the employee name to provide information for contact tracing.
The new guidance can be found here, under Section K, the Vaccination Section, of the EEOC’s What You Should Know About COVID-19 and the ADA, the Rehabilitation Act, and Other EEO Laws. The guidance covers many potential scenarios an employer might face.
