AARP Foundation Files Charge Against Workplace Wellness Program in Illinois

Austin’s wellness program requires employees and their spouses to submit to biometric screenings and meet specified wellness standards, including achieving certain weight requirements. Employees and spouses who do not participate in the program or meet its requirements must pay hefty insurance premium surcharges of $1,200 to $2,400 per year. 

For workers like Shawn Jones, whom AFL is representing, the surcharges area a big bite out of their annual income. In the fall of 2021, Jones started working at an Austin subsidiary in Decatur, Illinois. He and his spouse must complete the wellness program’s biometric tests by September 2022 or they will have to begin paying the surcharges. The surcharges amount to several months’ worth of utility payments or grocery bills for Shawn and workers like him, a financial hit that is difficult to weather, particularly in a time of high inflation.

AFL has successfully helped workers fight back against these types of workplace wellness policies, which penalize workers who do not wish to provide sensitive health data to their employer. In March 2022, AFL achieved a $1.29 million settlement for 5,400 workers at Yale University who filed suit against that institution’s wellness program. In 2016, AFL prevailed in a lawsuit against the EEOC, arguing that regulations allowing employers to impose penalties of up to 30 percent of monthly insurance premiums in their wellness programs resulted in penalties so high that they rendered such programs “involuntary.” The EEOC has not issued subsequent regulations, and some employers have continued to impose penalties and surcharges for non-participation in wellness programs.