Stop Before It Starts: Regulating Employee Microchipping in the COVID-19 Era

The focus is on regulating employee microchipping. The important points of this article are as follows. First, the law must prohibit employee microchipping as a condition of employment, penalizing any employee for refusing to be microchipped, or allowing an employer to access data from an employee microchip without the employee's permission. State legislatures should stop this upcoming problem of employers requiring their employees to be chipped as a condition of employment. Second, the "voluntary" use in the workplace of an employee's microchip implant, if even allowed at all, must be heavily regulated to protect employee privacy rights. States should enact their own employee microchipping statutes because the common law of employee invasion of privacy is too ambiguous to provide the certainty and clarity in the law that is necessary to protect employee privacy on this matter. Third, federal and state employment discrimination laws that provide accommodation rights for disabled and religious employees must be adhered to when employee microchipping issues arise in the workplace for protected individuals.