§2000ff–2 Employment Agency Practices

Summary

Employment agencies must not use genetic information to hurt someone’s job chances. They cannot refuse to refer someone for a job, limit or sort people in ways that take away job opportunities, or try to make an employer treat someone unfairly because of genetic information. An agency also may not ask for, require, or buy genetic information about a person or their family except in five situations: (1) an accidental request for family medical history; (2) when the agency offers health or genetic services (like a wellness program) and the person gives prior, written permission, only the health provider sees identifiable results, and the agency gets only non-identifying, combined data for those services; (3) when the information is needed for medical certification under family or medical leave laws; (4) when the agency buys publicly sold materials (newspapers, magazines, books) that happen to include family medical history (but not medical databases or court records); and (5) when genetic monitoring for workplace toxins is done with notice and consent (or if law requires it), results are given to the person, the monitoring follows federal or state rules, and the agency only receives non-identifying, combined results. Even in these cases, the information cannot be used to discriminate or handled in ways that break the law’s privacy protections.