What you need to know about the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act

Being pregnant is hard enough, and for decades, people have also had to worry about maintaining a healthy pregnancy while doing their job. But new legislation is guaranteeing new rights for pregnant workers, and employers should be ready to step up, as the law goes into effect in June.

Decades in the making. The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA) was passed in December and stipulates that employers must provide pregnant people with “reasonable accommodations” during their pregnancy, according to the EEOC. The law also stipulates that employers may not retaliate against an employee who needs accommodations for their pregnancy or deny job opportunities to a qualified employee based on their pregnancy.

The bipartisan law was born in part from the Americans with Disabilities Act, Congressman Jerrold Nadler told HR Brew at a recent event celebrating the PWFA’s signing. “I took those words directly from the ADA,” he said. “We have 30 years of judicial interpretation of exactly what those words mean.

While there was existing legislation (the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978), it was unclear, and workers couldn’t hold employers to task. And despite some state laws providing accommodations to pregnant employees, there wasn’t enough at the national level until now.

The National Partnership for Women and Families (NPWF) helped draft and lobbied for both pieces of legislation. Lelaine Bigelow, VP for social impact at NPWF, told HR Brew why the legislation was needed. “A lot of people don’t think that pregnancy discrimination happens, but in five years, from 2010 to 2015, there were 31,000 cases of pregnancy discrimination filed at the EEOC,” she explained.

Get ready, employers. Starting June 27, 2023, employers with more than 15 employees will be expected to comply with the new legislation. Advocates hope that the new law will allow pregnant workers to remain in the workplace, and maintain healthy pregnancies while working.

The EEOC outlines several examples of what could constitute a reasonable accommodation for pregnant workers, including longer bathroom breaks, more time to sit down, or less strenuous work.

Looking ahead, employers will have to be part of the process for employees to know their rights, Bigelow said. “What you’re going to see, is all of the advocates that played a role in passing this bill [will] also reach out to those same communities to ensure that there’s a ‘know your rights’ document, and women and pregnant people across the country are able to know about this law and demand their rights.”—KP