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Discuss employment-law issues such as family leave, overtime, disabilities law, harassment, immigration and termination.
My understanding is that smoking is not currently considered a disability or protected class. As a company considering asking applicants if they smoke, and possibly using a "yes" answer to deny employ
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Smoking
posted at 8/11/1999 1:26 AM EDT
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Posts: 1
First: 8/11/1999 Last: 8/11/1999 |
My understanding is that smoking is not currently considered a disability or protected class. As a company considering asking applicants if they smoke, and possibly using a "yes" answer to deny employment - is there any current legislation out there that may affect our decision to do this? State - Kansas. |
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Smoking
posted at 8/12/1999 2:12 AM EDT
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Posts: 2217
First: 6/16/1999 Last: 12/13/2001 |
The ADA provides that "[n]othing in this chapter shall be construed to preclude the prohibition of, or the imposition of restrictions on, smoking in places of employment...." 42 U.S.C. Sec. 12201(b). A growing number of states and municipalities have actually required that employers limit smoking in the workplace. State anti-discrimination laws vary; I am not familiar with Kansas State law.
On a practical level, why would you want to base hiring decisions based on whether or not someone is a smoker, so long as they will comply with your company's smoking policy? In the absence of a rationale reason for such a policy, I could envision some challenge to the policy as a pretext for discrimination (on some basis other than disability), or under a disparate impact theory (i.e., the policy of not hiring smokers impacts more heavily on a protected class than the general applicant pool, and is not justified by business necessity). |
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