In what’s believed to be the first test of a new federal law, a Connecticut woman claims her employer fired her in violation of the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act.
Pamela Fink says she carries a gene that can significantly increase the risk of getting breast cancer. After two sisters were diagnosed with the disease, she underwent a voluntary double mastectomy — dropping her likelihood of developing the cancer from 80% to 5%.
And then she was fired.
Revealed test results
Fink had told her employer the results of the DNA test that revealed the presence of the mutant gene before she went under the knife. She took four weeks off, during which a consultant took over her duties. In the months following her return to work, the consultant became her permanent supervisor.
Fink says she started to receive negative performance reviews, which hadn’t been the case in her previous four years with the company. Finally, after she had taken an additional ten days off for a second procedure, she was fired.
Fink filed complaints with both state employment officials and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), claiming she’d been discriminated against because she carried the high-risk breast cancer gene. Filing the EEOC claim is the first step toward suing the employer in federal court.
For its part, the employer, MXenergy, says Fink’s allegations are groundless, and “there is far more to this (case) than what has been reported.”
GINA was passed in 2008 and went into effect late last year. For an overview of the law, go here.
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