EEOC sues Yale Hospital alleging Age/Disability discrimination

Excerpted from Orthopedics This Week Inc. by Kim DelMonico

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has sued Yale New Haven Hospital (YNHH) in federal court, charging that YNHH’s requirement that medical staff age 70 and older undergo cognitive testing violates federal anti-discrimination law.

The EEOC filed suit under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and Title I of the Civil Rights Act, to correct unlawful employment practices on the basis of age, to redress interference with rights protected under the ADA, to stop medical examinations in violation of the ADEA and ADA, and to provide appropriate relief to aggrieved employees and individuals who were adversely affected by such practices.

In the pleadings, the EEOC alleges that YNHH has adopted and implemented what it calls a “Late Career Practitioner Policy” (“the Policy”). The Policy requires any individual age 70 and older (“age 70+”) who applies for, or seeks to renew, medical staff privileges at YNHH to take both an ophthalmologic and a neuropsychological medical examination. The EEOC further claims that individuals and employees younger than age 70 are not subject to this requirement.

The EEOC argues that by subjecting only age 70+ applicants to, and age 70+ employees of, YNHH to the Policy, YNHH violates the ADEA. The EEOC further argues that by subjecting its employees to the Policy, YNHH violates the ADA’s prohibition against subjecting employees to medical examinations that are not job-related and consistent with business necessity.
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