Will Trump Usher in a New Wave of Pregnancy Discrimination?

[Celerity]

Pregnant and postpartum workers typically enjoy federal laws that provide workplace protection. But the White House’s draconian approach to governing puts all of that in grave doubt.

https://newrepublic.com/article/193102/trump-workplace-pregnancy-discrimination-law

https://archive.ph/jASFy


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If you are an expecting parent or have just welcomed a child into the world, the Trump administration is a parade of horribles. You are facing a political climate that may leave you and your child at risk for severe health problems, with childhood vaccines under threat and federal funding for public health getting slashed to the bone. Those same draconian cuts will make it harder for you to support your family should financial troubles arise, forcing you to look toward government assistance. Those financial troubles are now likelier than ever, with the administration’s tariffs stoking recessionary pressures and driving up the costs of goods you need to purchase every day. But here’s an undersung threat to your livelihood: Political leaders and government officials may also make it harder for many pregnant and postpartum workers to keep their jobs and hold their employers accountable for discrimination.

Advocates for labor and civil rights protections want pregnant people to know that despite the Trump administration’s attacks on celebrating any form of diversity in or outside of the workplace, protections for pregnant and postpartum people at work still exist. They come in the form of the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, or PWFA—a fairly fresh law that went into effect in 2023 that focuses on ensuring pregnant and postpartum workers receive workplace accommodations without being punished by their employers—and a law that’s been in place since the 1970s, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, or PDA, that prohibits discrimination on the basis of pregnancy. The PWFA addresses gaps in protections for pregnant workers that the PDA and Americans with Disabilities Act can’t always cover.

“A lot of things [that fall] under the Pregnancy Discrimination Act might look like a person’s boss firing them because they are pregnant or they don’t want the optics of a pregnant worker working the front desk versus a person who comes to them and says I need a stool to sit at that front desk and it then becomes a violation of the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act if they’re denied that stool,” said Katie Sandson, senior counsel on education and workplace justice at the National Women’s Law Center. Although many pregnant and postpartum workers still have the law on their side, there are always questions of how the law will be enforced, whether employers will take their chances flouting the law—or are even aware of it.

But the current administration’s attacks on civil rights issues add another layer of worry and uncertainty about whether workers will have a fair chance of being heard. After Trump fired two of its commissioners, there is now a lack of a quorum in the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the agency responsible for enforcing nondiscrimination protections for pregnant workers and ensuring that employers provide accommodations for these expecting or newly-minted parents. That doesn’t stop discrimination cases from moving forward. However, it does stop the EEOC from issuing formal guidance and rulemakings. As Timothy Noah noted in a February piece for The New Republic, some of Trump’s eagerness to throw a sledgehammer to the federal government may hurt his administration’s own agenda to roll back Biden-era regulations.

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