Hawaii County will pay $115,000 and cease the requirement of urinalyses and other medical screenings as a condition of employment for most positions. ADVERTISING Hawaii County will pay $115,000 and cease the requirement of urinalyses and other medical screenings as
Hawaii County will pay $115,000 and cease the requirement of urinalyses and other medical screenings as a condition of employment for most positions.
The county, however, will continue screening employees defined as “safety-sensitive,” such as police officers, and positions regulated by the federal Department of Transportation. That equates to about 3 percent of county employees.
The change in policy follows a settlement between the county and Rebekah Taylor-Failor, a Kailua-Kona woman whom the county had previously tendered a conditional job offer. The federal lawsuit was filed in March on behalf of Taylor-Failor by the ACLU and the law firm of Peiffer Rosca Wolf Abdullah Kane & Carr.
Taylor-Failor had moved from Oregon to Kona to accept the job as a legal clerk within the county Prosecutor’s Office, according to a statement from the ACLU. After giving Taylor-Failor a conditional job offer, the county required her to complete a detailed, personal questionnaire about her medical history and give a urine sample for analysis. Hawaii County required the screenings of all its prospective employees.
Taylor-Failor asked the court in her initial suit that she be permitted to start working without submitting to urinalysis; on March 13, the court granted that request, ruling that “the urinalysis would violate Taylor-Failor’s Fourth Amendment rights,” according to the ACLU. She began working March 16 for the county.
The lawsuit challenged the county’s requirement that all prospective employees submit to urinalysis and answer questions about medical history, regardless of the physical duties the applicant would perform on the job. The ACLU argued urinalysis testing reveals sensitive private medical information — such as whether an individual is diabetic, pregnant, is biologically male or female, has high cholesterol, or has a sexually transmitted disease — and that the tests were not related to actual job requirements of a particular occupation.
The ACLU’s attempts to resolve these problems without litigation in 2013 were unsuccessful, and Taylor-Failor’s attorney’s filed the lawsuit asking the court for a temporary restraining order to prevent the county from violating the woman’s rights to privacy.
The court granted the request, noting in its order that “the County has proffered no explanation as to why it is entitled to search Taylor-Failor’s urine before she may begin employment in her light duty, clerical, non-safety-sensitive position. … Employment requirements cannot stand where they violate rights of a constitutional dimension.”
The county will also pay $115,000 in attorneys’ fees and costs.
“Medical data is some of our most privately held information, and it is critical that we protect it from government overreach. The government has no right to perform invasive searches of bodily fluids to determine whether an office worker can perform his/her job,” ACLU of Hawaii Legal Director Daniel Gluck said in a prepared statement.
The ACLU also noted it has a shared a copy of the agreement in the Hawaii County case with officials of Maui and Kauai counties, both of which the organization said have had similar pre-employment medical examination requirements.
