The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008

Academic Paper from the year 2021 in the subject Leadership and Human Resources - Miscellaneous, grade: 100, , course: EEO, language: English, abstract: Throughout the history of the United States of America, discrimination has been one of the major issues found within employment decisions. To counter these discriminatory actions, laws have been passed to make these actions illegal. For example, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 created protected classes (race, color, religion, sex, and national origin) that could not be discriminated against in employment actions. Later the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 came along to stop discriminatory employment decisions based upon age. Finally, the American with Disabilities Act of 1990 was enacted to stop discriminatory decisions against those with disabilities. A common theme in each of these laws is that they came along to fix a problem. None of these laws were preemptive but were the effect of years of discriminatory actions. But this is not the case with one of the most recent civil rights laws, The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008. Unlike these laws that have been mentioned so far, The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008, shortened as GINA, was passed in efforts to prevent discriminatory actions that had little history of occurring (Sarata & Feder, 2015). Instead, GINA was enacted out of fear that with improving gene related science, that an individual’s genetics may at some point be used to discriminate against them.