Workplace wellness programs are increasingly common, with many offering financial incentives, social networking support and coaching to encourage employees to participate in various activities – from donning fitness wearables and using apps to quitting smoking, to monitoring their blood pressure and engaging more often with their insurer.

While most of these programs are voluntary, some say they carry a risk to privacy, threat of financial punishment and potential discrimination against older employees --to the point where AARP was prompted to sue the federal government entity in charge of finalizing rules around the wellness programs.

The suit, filed Monday in Washington, D.C., seeks to invalidate the provisions of the rules designed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) in May that set limits on the monetary value of incentives that employers can offer to employees and their spouses to convince them to contribute specific health information to a wellness program. The rules put forth that employers could set the incentive as high as 30 percent of the annual cost of a worker’s health insurance coverage.

What the AARP claims the rules are essentially doing, however, is compelling employees to either reveal sensitive medical information or pay up in the form of financial penalties.

“Contrary to statutory law, the rules effectively enable employers to make employees ‘offers they can’t refuse’,” William Alvarado Rivera, AARP’s senior vice president for litigation said in a statement. “These rules are likely to have an immediate, negative impact on workers who will have to face a lose-lose choice between sacrificing their civil rights and suffering financial hardship.”

Further, the AARP lawsuit alleges that the EEOC’s new rules undermine two major federal laws ­ – the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act – that both forbid employers from asking about personal and family health information. In January, it was ruled that the new EEOC rules, which take effect in 2017, do not violate the ADA.

MobiHealthNews has reached out to the EEOC for a comment on the suit, and will update this story if they reply.

But, while both laws have exceptions for voluntary wellness programs, the AARP says the incentives for participating in the programs equate to penalties for those who choose not to join a workplace wellness program.

“These rules veer from the EEOC’s important role of protecting against discrimination,” Rivera stated. “AARP believes strongly that these rules violate the law, harm workers’ privacy rights, and must be changed.”