potential employer wants me to disclose any medical conditions, including migraines, depression, eczema, and more

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

A reader writes:

I recently interviewed for an admin role, essentially front reception, for a private hospital. The job is entirely non-clinical.

After the interview, the hiring manager emailed me to say that they would like to progress my application to the next stage. In the email they included a link for me to complete some pre-employment checks. Some were standard, such as proof of identity, criminal history record check, etc. But the first step is a “pre-employment health questionnaire,” which asks me to disclose my medical history, in the form of answering yes/no to a long list of ailments, including but not limited to:
• epilepsy, fits, blackouts, fainting turns, or dizzy spells
• any injury or condition involving the neck, back, shoulders, limbs, etc.
• any skin condition including eczema, psoriasis, or dermatitis
• any heart condition
• any lung condition including asthma
• migraines or frequent headaches
• hay fever (?????)
• mental illness or nervous conditions, including anxiety, depression, phobia, psychosis, or nervous breakdown

None of these are relevant to the requirements of the role. I was already unsure about going further in the recruitment process due to some additional information I gleaned during the interview, but this has me feeling especially uneasy. To be clear, I have not yet received a job offer.

Every person I’ve approached for an opinion has questioned the legality of it all, and frankly I’m in the same boat. I intend to email the hiring manager to withdraw my candidacy, for various reasons, but is this “health questionnaire” reason enough?

Holy hell, yes. This is flagrantly illegal.

(Also, eczema? Why?!)

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) prohibits employers from asking job candidates medical questions unless they are specifically related to the job and “consistent with business necessity.”

Some employers do require a pre-employment physical (which I’d argue is a huge overstep for most jobs, and an outdated relic from the past). But even then, that can’t happen before they’ve offered you the job and they can’t reject you because of information revealed by the exam, unless the reasons for the rejection are “job-related and consistent with business necessity.”

Oddly, the exam itself doesn’t have to be job-related and consistent with business necessity. They can ask about mental illness, STDs, hay fever, anything they want during it. They just can’t reject you over it unless they can show there’s a legitimate job-related reason to do so. (If you are thinking this is bizarre and inappropriately invasive … yes.) Also, generally the only thing from the exam that can be disclosed directly to the employer is the examiner’s conclusions about whether or not you can work with or without accommodations or restrictions. The exam results, including any medical history taken from it, needed to be treated as confidential and kept separate from other employment-related records.

But you’re not even at that point. You don’t have a job offer. You’re a job candidate, not an employee or a new hire. So this is just illegal, plain and simple.

It sounds like you’re planning to withdraw from their hiring process regardless. When you do, free to tell them what part of your reason was this invasive and illegal medical questionnaire. You can also report their violation of the law to the EEOC, and here’s info on how to do that.