Employer's new medication policy: is it illegal? LOCATION: US, IL
First time ever posting on Reddit, so apologies for any formatting errors or faux pas.
I work in childcare, running classes and activities mostly for littles (1-4 years old) but sometimes for kids up to 7 years old as well. My boss recently announced a series of new policies, including one about employees that take medication.
We are no longer allowed to keep our medications near us, and instead can only keep them in a specific room far from the childcare space. We are also no longer allowed to leave the childcare space under any circumstances when children are present for classes (except in the case of emergency, but an "emergency" is not defined).
I have a prescription related to my mental health that my doctor recommended I take at a specific time every day. This time happens to coincide with the time that classes are usually happening. I also have other chronic health conditions that don't impact me every day but that I keep other emergency medications on hand for.
So in summary: we can only take our medications in a specific location but we're not allowed to access said location until after classes are done and all kids are out of the building.
Is it illegal for an employer to control what time an employee is allowed to take their medications?
Bonus points: Boss also includes the children's emergency medications in this too. Sometimes we have T1 diabetic kids on site, as well as children with asthma inhalers or epipens. In an emergency, we would have to yell for someone to watch the kids, wait for them to show up, and then run across the building, up and down stairs, to get their emergency meds.