Regulations put in place by the EqualEmployment Opportunity Commission to address employer wellness programs under the Americanswith Disabilities Act and the Genetic Information NondiscriminationAct will be vacated on January 1, 2019.

HRDive reports that the regulations hadalready been determined by a federal judge not to be properlyjustified. However, citing the potential for “disruptive consequences” to employers, who needat least six months to design new programs, he opted not to vacatethe rules immediately, instead telling the EEOC to come up with newrules.

A new draft, according to the EEOC, will be available in Augustof 2018; final rules will likely take untill October of 2019. Theregulations, says HRDive, were an attempt to clarify therequirement that wellness programs be “voluntary”—in other words,at which specific point a financial incentive to participate makesa program involuntary instead of actually allowing would-beparticipants a true choice of whether to participate.

A report from the Society for Human Resource Management says thata lawsuit filed by AARP in October of 2016 “challenged the portionsof the EEOC’s 2016 workplace wellness regulations under the ADA andGINA that let employers impose greater premiums of up to 30 percentof self-only coverage on employees who refuse to disclose medicaland genetic information through wellness programsat work.”

In the existing regulations, the commission sets the limit at 30percent of the cost of coverage. It has yet to be determined whatfinancial limit the new rulemaking might contain, whether new leadership might change the agency’s direction, and whetherthe date set by the court might lead EEOC to adjust itstimeline.

According to the report, the rules were judged “unlawful”because the EEOC didn’t provide proper justification for them, northe decision to set the limit at 30 percent. It quotes AnnCaresani, an attorney with Tucker Ellis in Cleveland and Columbus,Ohio, saying, “The EEOC failed to develop any concrete data,studies or analysis to support its conclusion that a 30 percentincentive level made the incentive ‘voluntary’ under the ADA andGINA. It just borrowed the 30 percent level from the HealthInsurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) regulations,where there is no ‘voluntary’ requirement.”