Does an employer’s interest in creating a healthy workplace justify discrimination against smokers and the obese? If you are a Wisconsin employer and your first impulse is to strike such job candidates from consideration, you had better not obey it.
This subject came to mind after it became apparent that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, aka ObamaCare, could be struck down in its entirety by the U.S. Supreme Court. It also came to mind after recent publicity about employer Facebook intrusions – another no-no from an employment law standpoint.
The same hands-off policy applies to job discrimination based on health status, no matter how much an employer thinks it can save in terms of health insurance premiums.
Attorney Charles P. Stevens doesn’t sound like the forbidding type, but he says Wisconsin employers should be very careful due to the state’s Fair Employment Act, which prohibits employers from discriminating due to an employee’s consumption, away from work, of lawful products.
Yet in what could well become a civil rights issue, some employers in other states, which lack such worker protections, have done just that. The anticipated costs associated with smoking and obesity usually are the motivations.
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