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Phoenix666 writes:

A federal jury has concluded that an Atlanta grocery warehousing firm must pay two employees a combined $2.2 million for forcing them to submit to a buccal cheek swab to determine if their DNA was a match to excreta being left throughout the facility.

Employees Jack Lowe and Dennis Reynolds declined a combined $200,000 settlement offer from Atlas Logistics Group Retail Services. Instead, they forged ahead with the first damages trial resulting from 2008 civil rights legislation that generally bars employers from using individuals' "genetic information" when making hiring, firing, job placement, or promotion decisions.

Atlas Logistics claimed the "genetic information" at issue wasn't covered by the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA). Atlas Logistics asserted that GINA excludes analyses of DNA, RNA, chromosomes, proteins, or metabolites if such analyses do not reveal an individual's propensity for disease.

US District Judge Amy Totenberg, however, refused to toss the case, which she described as the search for the "devious defecator" who left "offending fecal matter" across the Atlanta-area warehouse that sorted and delivered products for grocery stores. The judge ruled that the "plain meaning of the statute's text" is satisfactory for the case to go forward despite the tests at issue not revealing disease propensities.