The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) published a new fact sheet entitled “Wearables in the Workplace: The Use of Wearables and Other Monitoring Technology Under Federal Employment Discrimination Laws,” which discusses the use of wearable technologies (wearables) that can be used to track various physical factors, such as an employee’s location, heart rate, electrical brain activity, or fatigue under federal employment discrimination laws.
The fact sheet reminds employers that employment discrimination laws apply to the collection and use of information from wearables and addresses the need for employers to provide reasonable accommodations related to wearables. It also warns employers that using watches, rings, glasses, helmets, and other wearables to collect information about a worker’s health and biometric data may constitute a “medical examination” as defined under the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA). Additionally, the fact sheet notes that if a wearable requires employees to provide health information (including while setting up the device) an employer may be making “disability-related inquiries” for ADA purposes. The fact sheet also asserts that an employer’s improper use of information that wearables collect may raise concerns under other federal anti-discrimination laws—especially if employers use data collected by wearable devices to determine sex, age, genetic information, disability, or race to take an adverse action against an employee. The document provides examples of practices the EEOC wants employers to avoid and places employers on notice that using wearables may require them to provide reasonable accommodations under the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, or as a religious or disability-related accommodation.