§2000ff–4 Training Programs

Summary

Employers, labor unions, and joint labor-management committees that run apprenticeship, training, or retraining programs must not use a person’s genetic information to deny them admission or a job, to limit or separate applicants or participants in ways that hurt their opportunities or status, or to try to cause someone else to do those things. They also must not ask for, require, or buy genetic information about a person or their family, except in six narrow cases: (1) an accidental request for family medical history; (2) when the employer offers health or genetic services (including wellness programs) and the person gives prior, knowing, voluntary, written permission, only the person and the health professional see identifiable results, and the employer only gets non-identifying aggregate results used for those services; (3) when family medical history is needed to meet federal or State family and medical leave certification rules; (4) when buying commercially and publicly available documents like newspapers, magazines, periodicals, and books (not medical databases or court records); (5) for genetic monitoring of workplace effects from toxic substances, but only with written notice, prior consent or a legal requirement, individual results given to the person, compliance with applicable Federal or State monitoring rules, and only aggregate results to the employer; and (6) when a forensic lab or similar employer does DNA work for law enforcement or to identify human remains and needs genetic markers only for quality control to detect contamination. Information collected under these exceptions still cannot be used to discriminate or disclosed in ways that break the law’s privacy protections.