(Gray News) – Employers can require their workers to receive a COVID-19 vaccine and exclude them from the workplace if they refuse, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said in guidelines published in early this week.
The law requires employers to guarantee a safe job and this can mean the need to vaccinate their workers.
There are two exceptions for people with disabilities or “sincerely maintained” religious beliefs that prevent them from getting vaccinated. The employer should make reasonable adjustments for these people.
Although the Americans with Disabilities Act limits an employer’s ability to require workers to undergo a medical examination, the EEOC says that vaccination is not considered a medical examination.
“If an employer administers a vaccine to an employee to protect him or her from hiring COVID-19, the employer does not seek information about a person’s current deficiencies or health status and is therefore not a medical examination, ”the EEOC said in its latest guidelines.
However, questions about pre-screening vaccination could violate an ADA provision on disability-related consultations. This means that employers who administer vaccines must demonstrate that screening questions are “work-related and consistent with business needs.”
The guidelines added that while the worker may be physically excluded from entering the workplace for refusing to be vaccinated, this does not mean that the employer can automatically terminate the worker.
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