She Requested a Pregnancy Accommodation. Her Overtime Disappeared. Then Her Job Did.

The employer approved light duty. Seventeen days later, it fired the pregnant employee over an alleged policy violation from two months earlier.

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TL;DR: A warehouse associate plausibly alleged pregnancy discrimination and retaliation after her employer allegedly reduced her overtime, approved light duty, and then fired her. The court allowed her Title VII discrimination and Pregnant Workers Fairness Act retaliation claims to proceed but dismissed her failure-to-accommodate claim because she did not plausibly explain why the approved accommodation was ineffective.

📄 Read the court’s decision.

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Light duty was approved, but the timeline kept moving

The approval was part of the story. On a motion to dismiss, the court allowed the employee’s pregnancy-discrimination and Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA) retaliation claims to proceed while dismissing three claims without prejudice.

According to the complaint, the employee started working as a warehouse associate in March 2024. After she became lightheaded at work the next month, a nurse sent her home. She then sought additional medical attention and learned that she was pregnant.

She submitted pregnancy paperwork, and the employer allegedly reduced her overtime while leaving nonpregnant employees’ overtime undisturbed. She requested light duty on May 28, and the employer approved it on June 2. Her overtime opportunities allegedly disappeared entirely after the request.

On June 19, the employer fired her for allegedly sitting in a trailer two months earlier. She denied the violation and claimed that she had never received formal discipline or a written warning.

The sequence supported two claims, but not all five

The court had to decide whether those allegations plausibly connected the employee’s pregnancy or accommodation request to the loss of overtime and her termination.

The pregnancy-discrimination claim survived because the alleged pattern began after disclosure: reduced overtime, no overtime, and then termination for an older, isolated incident. The PWFA retaliation claim also survived because requesting an accommodation is protected activity under that statute, and the alleged adverse actions followed.

Her Title VII retaliation claim did not fare as well. A pregnancy-accommodation request is not protected activity under Title VII, and her allegation that she complained about discrimination omitted whom she told and when.

The failure-to-accommodate claim also failed. The employer approved light duty quickly, and the complaint merely asserted that the accommodation was ineffective without explaining how it failed to address her pregnancy-related limitations. The court also dismissed her harassment claim because increased scrutiny and reduced overtime did not plausibly describe an abusive working environment.

The court did not decide whether discrimination or retaliation occurred. Discovery may produce another explanation, but employers can reduce risk by reviewing the accommodation, compensation changes, and discipline as one timeline before acting.

Four pressure points in the pregnancy-accommodation timeline

An approved accommodation does not resolve retaliation risk

Approving light duty does not necessarily establish that the accommodation was reasonable or effective, and it does not resolve whether later actions were retaliatory. HR should separately examine whether compensation, scheduling, scrutiny, or discipline changed after the request and whether each change has an independent explanation.

Overtime can carry more risk than its label suggests

A reduction in overtime can affect compensation enough to support an adverse-action inference. Here, the court reasonably inferred at the pleading stage that overtime was a meaningful part of the employee’s compensation. Employers should be able to explain their allocation criteria and show how they were applied to comparable employees.

An accommodation’s effectiveness needs specifics

The plaintiff lost this claim because she never explained why light duty failed to address her limitations. Employers should still identify the restrictions being accommodated, confirm what the adjustment permits, and revisit it if the employee reports that it is not working.

Old misconduct and new protected activity make a difficult pairing

Discipline for older alleged misconduct can look different when it closely follows an accommodation request. The timing, the reason for acting when the employer did, prior discipline, and the treatment of comparable violations should all support the decision made.

The employer allegedly approved light duty on June 2 and fired the employee on June 19 over conduct from two months earlier. That is a lot of chronology packed into 17 days.