Yesterday, on the heels of the Supreme Court’s decision in Young v. UPS, Senator Bob Casey (D-PA), brought the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act back to the Senate. The Act, which is modeled after the Americans with Disabilities Act, makes it an unlawful employment practice for employers to: Continue reading
Holy crap. Literally.
A Texas church is now about $75,000 lighter in the wallet after a federal judge determined that having and enforcing a “no pregnancy in the workplace policy,” which prohibited the continued employment of any employee who became pregnant, violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. That’s the law that prohibits discrimination based on pregnancy. Yeah, it says it right there.
Here’s more on the decision from the EEOC’s press release.
But, I’ll do my best to sort it out for you.
Let’s assume that you have a pregnant employee who tells you that she has a lifting restriction. In the past, you have accommodated employees with disabilities who had similar lifting restrictions. You’ve also done the same for folks who got injured on the job and others who lost their Department of Transportation (DOT) certifications.
If you don’t provide the same accommodation to the pregnant employee, have you violated the Pregnancy Discrimination Act?
I know what some of you are thinking, “Seems more like a Tuesday topic to me.” To you folks I say, “Get the hell out of here! YOU’RE NUTS!!!”
Ok, you’re right, let’s start over.
One of the exotic dancers at a Georgia gentlemen’s club got preggers. Wait. Do the kids still say preggers? Yeah, let’s try and be mature about the serious Monday post. A woman who gyrates on stage for dollars, and maybe on customers’ laps too — I don’t know for sure — got pregnant. Hey, look, I’m not judging.
Two months later, she lost her job.
The woman claimed that her employment was terminated due to her pregnancy in violation of Title VII. Continue reading
That’s right folks. It’s time for another edition of “Fact or Fiction” a/k/a “Quick Answers to Quick Questions” a/k/a QATQQ f/k/a “I don’t feel like writing a long blog post.”
Oh, if I had a nickel for every time I got this question from an employer, “Hey Eric. We have this pregnant employee and she is very close to term. We’re concerned that if she continues working all the way up to childbirth, she may harm herself or the fetus. Can we require her to stay home?”
Eek! Check out this recent press release from the EEOC in which the agency announced that it is suing an employer, which allegedly required a pregnant employee to take unpaid leave until she was cleared by a doctor indicating that she could work despite her pregnancy. The EEOC further alleges, when the employee failed to provide a release, and after she and her mother disputed the legality of the requirement, the employee was fired in retaliation.
Seems one employer may not have received the memo. Now, the EEOC is taking aim. More on this and some tips for employers to avoid pregnancy-accommodation traps, after the jump…
On the heels of yesterday’s astounding blogging success, “What LeBron’s return teaches employers about accommodating the Mark of the Beast” — Pulitzer, please — I was planning on coming at you today with “Five Workplace Lessons from Dutch Soccer’s Third Place in the World Cup.” It was going to have this cute Orange is the New Black theme, but then, the Twitterz spoke.
The Employer Handbook Blog
@EEOCNews just issued updated #Pregnancy Guidance. Check it out now: http://t.co/4L7HB9TV7a #EEOC
— EEOC.gov (@EEOCNews) July 14, 2014
Last night, having come across this wacky Family Show gif, I couldn’t decide whether to binge watch the first season of Amish Mafia. Again. For the third time.
(And, by third, I mean eighth).
Or dip my English toe into the Breaking Amish pool.
Recently, I gave a webinar about the interplay between the Family and Medical Leave Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act. One of the takeaways there was that, when an employee’s 12 weeks of FMLA leave expire, you need to be thinking about ADA implications rather than processing a pink slip at 12 weeks and a day. This is because additional leave may be a reasonable accommodation.
The same issues can arise if you have a pregnant employee. That is, you need to consider the interplay between the Pregnancy Discrimination Act and the ADA.
A recent case shows how the ADA may apply to pregnant employees.