Medical Exams
Car 54
3 Posts
I think I posted this in the wrong place so I'm doing it again.
I have a question for you. Is there a basis for denying someone employment because of high cholesterol on a medical exam. I work for an agency that must meet state standards for police officers. Local police departments do not deny employment for this purpose; however, the agency I work for does. So, if you have a total count of over 240, our policy says you are not medically qualified. Is this legal and, if not, are we subject to liability? I would appreciate your comments on this.
I have a question for you. Is there a basis for denying someone employment because of high cholesterol on a medical exam. I work for an agency that must meet state standards for police officers. Local police departments do not deny employment for this purpose; however, the agency I work for does. So, if you have a total count of over 240, our policy says you are not medically qualified. Is this legal and, if not, are we subject to liability? I would appreciate your comments on this.
Comments
As a lay person, I don't think the answer is absolutely clear without having more information but I do think that the 240 cholesterol criteria is probably okay -- depending.
Working backwards:
An employer, in a conditional, post-offer medical examination is not required to have job-related medical questions that have a business necessity. It can ask general types of health questions. However, it may not use the results of such an examination to eliminate individuals with disabilities from employment. If it does, then the standard has to be job-related and have a business necessity. Take a look at 29CFR1630.14(b)(3): [url]http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/get-cfr.cgi?TITLE=29&PART=1630&SECTION=14&YEAR=2002&TYPE=TEXT[/url]
In your post, you say your state law enforcement agency is using a medical standard that other law ienforcement agencies in the state are not using. Given that a medical inquiry doesn't have to be job-related and have a business necessity basis, even if the local law enforcement agencies are absolutely medically correct to conclude that a 240 cholesterol count is irrelevant to job performance while your agency is totally wrong, it doesn't appear by itself to be a problem.
There are two possibilities for your agency regarding the standard it is using.
1. "The 240 count certainly is job-related with a business necessity in our agency despite the job of the police officer in our agency and the job of the police officer in the local agencies being substantially the same; the local agencies are wrong." A variation could be that your state agency argues, "the jobs are substantially different and a 240 count is job-related and has a business necessity."
The arguments would be supported by evidence that there is either a substantial difference in the job duties of a state police officer from a local police officer that warrants the 240 count, or the state agency can demonstrate it's standard is meaningful (and may need also to show why the local standard isn't). The fact that a number of local agencies don't use the standard is interesting but what it means is unclear in context of what the state agency could argue.
2."We acknowledge that the 240 count is not probative of any job-related factor but it is not improper given that we aren't selecting-out people with disabilities and only people with disabilities because of it.
Any applicant who otherwise meets all of the other medical standards will be rejected if the count is 240 or over. And individuals who are disabled who have a count less thna 240 are hired if they can do the essential funcitons of the job with or without reasonable accommodation. There is no statistical relationship to the 240 and the rejection of people with ADA disabilities; that is people with no ADA disabilitiy are rejected in the same percentages as people with ADA disabilities and the rejections hit men, women, minorities, people over 40 and under 40 in the same percentages."
In that last position, by itself a person with a 240 cholesterol count isn't necessarily ADA-qualified as disabled. There may be other conditions that make the person ADA-qualified. So the question then becomes if there is a statistical correlation to the 240 count and people who are ADA-disabled.
As a lay person that's the way I see it. Maybe one of the HR-Hero lawyers will jump in and make it more definitive one way or the other.