Montgomery County employers would no longer be able to ask their employees questions about abortion care, miscarriage and other reproductive health information under a new bill introduced by the County Council on Tuesday.
“If it is not necessary to their employment, it should not be required for them to disclose,” said councilmember Dawn Luedtke (D-Dist. 7), who is co-sponsoring the legislation with councilmember Gabe Albornoz (D-At-large).
The bill would “explicitly prohibit employers from requesting or considering applicants’ sexual or reproductive health information, such as information related to abortion care, miscarriage, contraception, sterilization, pregnancy, or family planning,” according to the proposed legislation.
Employers within the county would still be permitted to ask questions about an employee or employee’s health history only to the extent that it is “business related” and relevant to the employee’s job duties, but sexual and reproductive history would be excluded.
The council passed a similar bill in March that applied these restrictions to the county government as an employer.
Luedtke said that legislation inspired the new bill.
“Those questions that were personally invasive, potentially harmful, and potentially detrimental to the county and in finding high-quality employees may be impacting our private sector employees as well,” Luedtke said.
Albornoz said he was “shocked” by “outdated and really inappropriate healthcare information” that was being asked of county employees when working on the previous bill and wanted to extend the same protections to private sector employees.
“[The bill] prohibits employers from requesting any sexual and reproductive health information, which we have seen, unfortunately, be weaponized in other parts of our country. We must ensure that does not happen here in our community,” Albornoz said.
Luedtke said the legislation is partly a response to the Dobbs v. Jackson U.S. Supreme Court decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 and ruled that the U.S. Constitution does not confer the legal right to an abortion. Luedtke said while abortion is legal in Maryland, there is concern that private reproductive history could be passed along if an employee moves to a state where abortion is not legal.
“We know that Maryland can be a place and space for those where their reproductive rights will be protected,” Luedke said. “Once that information is collected, it is then available should they move somewhere else later or should the landscape change.”
A public hearing on the bill is scheduled for 1:30 p.m. Jan. 16. No vote has been scheduled.