Claiming workplace vaccine exemption What are the required elements of valid claims for workplace exemptions of the following types? Exemption would be for an employer-required vaccination against some communicable illness. Medical: I guess this requires that a medical professional confirms the need for a medical exemption. Can it be any doctor? Religious/Philosophical: Does the employee have to provide any evidence that beliefs are strongly held and genuine, or must the employer disprove this? Also, how specific does the belief need to be? Also, is it the responsibility of the employee to suggest reasonable accommodations or must the employer figure out how to accommodate? If the employee doesn't find the accommodation suitable, must there be a separate exemption claimed for the accommodation? Assume this in the US, all parties are US citizens, employment is full time salaried exempt, at will and no union. See also this related question.
If the requirement is imposed by an employer, then the basis for an exemption, if any, would be whatever the employer choose to allow, unless some applicable law required some particular exemption. Such mandates are not common. Indeed I do not recall hearing of any such absolute mandates. But an employer could choose to impose one, and I have heard (and read) discussions of hospitals, for example, requiring COVID-19 vaccinations to be taken by employees when available. If an employer mandates a vaccination, it is up to the employer to decide when, and if, an exemption is warranted. It is up to the employee to decide whether to comply by accepting the vaccination or refuse at the risk of being fired. I do not know of any law which would specifically require an employer to grant exemptions in particular circumstances. A law might exist, or be passed, requiring such exemptions. If the employee had a particular medical condition which makes a vaccination si9gnificantly more risky for that employee than for an average person, and if that condition was considered to be a disability (not all or even most medical conditions are so considered) then the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) would require the employer to offer a &quot;reasonable accommodation&quot; to the employee, if one is available. Exactly what accommodation is &quot;reasonable&quot; is a fact-based determination, and would depend on the reason for the mandate, the cost and burden of the accommodation on the employer, and the degree if risk to the employee with and without the accommodation. In some cases no accommodation is found to be &quot;reasonable&quot;, and in such cases the ADA does not mandate any accommodation at all. The ADA generally specifies whet must be done when an employee has \ a disability, but dopes not specify exactly how a disability must be proved. A medical certificate is common, but njot invariable, iof an employer questions the existence o a disability. The ADA would not require an exemption for a &quot;Religious/Philosophical&quot; objection. Soem state laws protect religious scruples in various particular employment situations. In some but not all states objections on such grounds for vaccinations otherwise required for school attendance are honored. The exact grounds accepted vary from state to state. A specific state would need to be listed for a more specific answer to be given, and I am not aware of any state that has such a requirement for exemption from a private employer's vaccine mandate. Addition: It seems from comments that some employers, such as hospitals and the military, already require vaccinations for some diseases. This seems reasonable to me, and does not change my answer otehrwise.
In england-and-wales there is no legal requirement, in the private sector, to advertise vacancies and employers can recruit whoever they choose as long as they do not commit unlawful direct or indirect discrimination and follow their own internal HR policies. Re: In the western hemisphere is it quite legal for employers to do things like... Exclude close family/marital relations of existing employees? YES Exclude internal applicants from consideration for jobs for which they have relevant qualifications? YES Hire non-local (here defined as those who can commute to work from their existing home) candidates in preference to local ones similarly qualified? YES Hire foreigners where they have suitable work permits? YES Summarily hire members of the business owner's family? YES as long as they are not &quot;phantom&quot; employees only put on the books soley to evade tax liabilities by, for example, paying a salary when they don't do any actual work.
In the absence of a contractual agreement saying otherwise, the lawsuit would probably just be subject to normal rules of tort liability. In that case, the contractor would probably lose his case unless he could prove that the one worker infected another through an act of negligence or could otherwise prove that the infected worker knew he was infected and posed a risk to others. In the basic negligence situation, the contractor would likely rely on the general duty we all have to avoid creating unreasonable risks of injury to third parties, and he would need to argue that Worker A somehow breached that duty. Coming to work knowing you're infected would almost certainly satisfy that standard, but it might be enough to simply show that Worker A was at a large gathering of unmasked people whose vaccination status was unknown. From there, he would also need to prove that breaching that duty caused him some injury, presumably by infecting Workers B through M, causing a work slowdown, causing missed deadlines, causing late fees, etc. The contractor might also pursue a claim for reckless, rather than negligent, conduct, if Worker A knew he was infected and came to work just the same. Or he might pursue an intentional tort claim if there was some reason to believe that Worker A was actually trying to get other people sick, as opposed to just ignoring the fact that such a risk existed. As I understand it, several states have also passed laws limiting liability for exposure to COVID in the workplace, so it's possible that none of these claims would be viable, no matter how strong the evidence.
Discrimination in employment is legal For example, you can discriminate to hire the more qualified or experienced candidate over less qualified ones. What you can’t do is discriminate on the basis of a protected category: The Alberta Human Rights Act (AHR Act) prohibits discrimination in employment based on the protected grounds of race, colour, ancestry, place of origin, religious beliefs, gender, gender identity, gender expression, age, physical disability, mental disability, marital status, family status, source of income, and sexual orientation. If it’s not on the list (or a proxy for something on the list), you can discriminate on it.
The relevant bit of legislation — Human Rights Act 1993 s22 — protects applicants and employees: Where an applicant for employment or an employee is qualified for work of any description, it shall be unlawful .. to refuse ... offer .. terminate ... retire ... by reason of any of the prohibited grounds of discrimination. So, if you never advertise but always invite people (i.e. offer them job straight away) then there are no applicants (as at no point does anybody apply for the job), and hence no employment discrimination. If you invite them for a "non-discriminatory screening interview" then there is no discrimination by definition of "non-discriminatory" :) behavioural / relational / mental / spiritual I'm pretty sure these criteria would be discriminatory in a advertised position. None of those criteria are prohibited grounds of discrimination (s21). However, it would be a good idea to clearly define them as "a genuine occupational qualification for the position" by drafting a job description and explaining why those traits are crucial for the business.
HIPAA imposes obligations on some people, but not all people. In the case of security and privacy questions, you would consult 45 CFR Part 164. A patient's actions are not subject to government sanctions, so a patient can provide or decline to provide email addresses following their own judgment. A healthcare or insurance provider would be required to securely keep PII under wraps. The regulations also do not impose obligations on unknowing potentially involved third-parties, i.e. no obligation is imposed on Google to know that an individual is using a Gmail account to transmit PII-related information. The medical provider has an obligation to store and transmit such information securely, which would mean for example that they do not send insecure plain text emails saying &quot;Sally Jones at 12345 67th Ave SW was treated for a loathsome disease, we're coding that as 0102, and we want $500&quot;. That obligation is passed on to employees via employment-contractual obligations, for example that may dictate what computer or software you can use to do the job. If the provider passes the buck to the employee (and I assume that the employee is just an employee), they have violated the security rule. In that case, they may be attempting to mitigate the consequences of their actions or at least check if there were identifiable violations of the privacy rule. In the scenario where SmithMed provides all of the infrastructure needed to bill insurance companies, it is not a HIPAA violation to inspect computer logs, email etc. to verify that the employee has been complying with security and privacy policies. It would likewise not be a HIPAA violation to inspect third-party accounts (Gmail etc) to determine whether there has been a security / privacy rule violation. That is as far as HIPAA takes you. Whether or not the ex-employee has an obligation to turn over their email account information is mostly determined by the employment contract, but it is highly unlikely that any such contract has a &quot;gimme your personal email on termination&quot; clause. It is not inconceivable that the employee negligently used their personal account rather than opening a new billing-job only account. Also depending on the email service provider, it may well be a violation of the terms of service to hand over your account information. (Instead, for a certain email provider, the company is expected to set up and pay for a company account). Those are considerations bearing on possible legal impediments to turning over the email information. Needless to say, don't share passwords etc. because that exposes you legally, but that is not about HIPAA.
What follows is a broad overview. I'm not an expert in this; I just have a bit of experience in this due to a tax situation my wife &amp; I experienced a few years ago. Please do not rely on this advice except as a starting point for more Googling. Your obligations (and your assistant's) will depend on whether the assistant is an employee or an independent contractor. In general, an independent contractor is someone you hire to "get a job done"; you have minimal control over the manner, time, place, tools, etc., that the assistant uses. An employee, on the other hand, is someone you hire to come to work at a particular time and do the job a particular way. (I'm glossing over some details here; see the IRS link above for more details.) If your assistant is an independent contractor, and you pay them over a certain threshold ($600 for 2020), you must provide them with Form 1099-MISC, and file a copy with the IRS as well. Your assistant will then be liable for income taxes on this amount, as well as self-employment tax (see below.) If your assistant is actually an employee, and you pay them over a certain threshold ($600 for 2020), you are required to provide them with a W-2 form, as well as filing a copy with the IRS. In addition, if you pay them more than a higher threshold ($2200 in a tax year or $1000 in any quarter for 2020), you are responsible for withholding taxes from their paychecks, as well as paying the employer's portion of Social Security, Medicare, and/or federal unemployment taxes. How to figure these taxes is complex, but generally the employee must provide you with a completed W-4, and then you must provide them (and the IRS) with a W-2 at the end of the tax year. See Publication 15: Employer's Tax Guide for all the gory details. The self-employment tax is designed to effectively cover the employer's portion of these taxes for self-employed workers. As you might imagine, employers are often tempted to misclassify employees as "independent contractors", since this means that this tax liability gets pushed from them onto their workers, as well as just making the employer's life easier. The Feds will not take kindly to such misclassification if it is discovered. Finally, for the state of Connecticut, consult the CT 1009-MISC filing guide (if your assistant is an independent contractor) or the Connecticut employer's tax guide (if they are an employee). The distinction is pretty much the same as at the federal level.
Yes, this would be an ADA violation The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires that &quot;reasonable accommodations&quot; be provided to people with disabilities in both the job application process and in the workplace. Specifically, this would be a failure to provide &quot;modifications or adjustments to a job application process that enable a qualified applicant with a disability to be considered for the position such qualified applicant desires&quot; as described in the EEOC enforcement guidelines. Software engineers generally are not required to stand up and move around much to do their jobs, so the employer wouldn't have an argument that requiring an applicant to do so in the interview process is somehow related to job requirements. I'm a software engineer myself, and I spend almost my entire day sitting down (and very little time drawing on whiteboards, especially now that I'm not allowed to be in the building where the whiteboards are). Possible reasonable accommodations would include getting a portable whiteboard that's lower to the ground or allowing the candidate to draw on paper instead.