The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on Thursday provided an update to its Enforcement Guidance on Pregnancy Discrimination, along with a question and answer document and a fact sheet for small businesses.
The revisions reflect the Supreme Court’s conclusion earlier this year in Young v. UPS that women may be able to prove unlawful pregnancy discrimination if the employer accommodated some workers but refused to accommodate pregnant women.
The court said employer policies not intended to discriminate on the basis of pregnancy may still violate the 1978 Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA) if they impose significant burdens on pregnant employees without a sufficiently strong justification.
The decision in Young does not affect most of the July 2014 EEOC Enforcement Guidance on Pregnancy Discrimination, and the following topics remain the same: the PDA’s application to current, past, and potential pregnancy; termination or refusal to hire someone because she is pregnant and other prohibited employment actions based on pregnancy; application of the PDA to lactation and breastfeeding; prohibition of forced leave policies; the obligation to treat women and men the same with respect to parental leave policies; and access to health insurance.
Nor did the high court’s decision address the effect of the ADA Amendments Act of 2008 on workers with pregnancy-related impairments. That discussion in the Guidance notes that, “Changes to the definition of the term ‘disability’ resulting from enactment of the ADA Amendments Act of 2008 make it much easier for pregnant workers with pregnancy-related impairments to demonstrate that they have disabilities for which they may be entitled to a reasonable accommodation under the ADA.”
The EEOC enforces federal laws prohibiting employment discrimination. Further information about the EEOC is available on its web site at www.eeoc.gov.
