How’s the EEOC Feeling about PWFA Regs? Acting Chair’s 2024 Letter Drops Hints

Labor Landscape

As happens when administrations turn over and the party in the White House changes, at the moment, Biden-era federal regulations stand to face scrutiny, scrapping, or irrelevance under the Trump agenda.

One set of rules almost certain to face changes soon are those implementing the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, which became effective last June. Although Biden-era guidance on the new regs appears to still be in effect – and up and running – the EEOC also seems to indicate that its current position toward the rules is captured in a letter then-Commissioner Andrea R. Lucas wrote in opposition to the regulations.

Lucas, who is now the EEOC’s acting chair, used the letter to reject the new rules as going too far to accommodate “the female sex.”

Here’s a look at what Lucas had to say about the regulations.

Title VII 

Lucas’s letter faults the EEOC for “importing” Title VII discrimination standards into pregnancy accommodation law when the preamble to the regulations indicated that “pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions” had the “same meaning as under Title VII,” a position Lucas opined had little support among courts or in administrative guidance.

“Having purported to bridge the [Pregnancy Discrimination Act] and the PWFA through an excerpted common phrase, the Commission then shoves broad concepts of unlawful pregnancy discrimination under Title VII into the PWFA, an accommodation statute designed to allow pregnant women to remain at work,” Lucas wrote. “The final rule opens the door to requiring accommodations potentially extending to a myriad of conditions ranging from infertility to menstruation to hormone issues to menopause.”

The problem, for Lucas, is that the rule requires an “obligation to accommodate any medical condition related to” a current pregnancy, past pregnancy, potential or intended pregnancy, infertility, fertility treatment, or use of contraception.

So, What is Lucas’s Answer?

The rules need to be reined in, according to Lucas, and “pregnancy” should have the “ordinary meaning of “the state of being pregnant, the period in which a child develops inside a woman’s body.” Perhaps ironically, the letter cited a National Institutes of Health website on the definition of pregnancy that was pulled down when the Trump administration took over.

Nonetheless, in Roe v. Wade-esq timelining, Lucas would limit “related medical conditions” covered by the PWFA to “conditions related to an actual current pregnancy of the worker, the worker’s childbirth, or a pregnancy or childbirth that has ended and the worker is in the postpartum period.”

‘Narrow Accommodation Gap’

According to Lucas, in the PWFA, Congress attempted to “fill a narrow accommodation gap between Title VII and the ADA.”

“Minor, simple, temporary accommodations for pregnant workers—such as water, food, and a place to sit while working—would allow women to remain working further into their pregnancies, if they wish to do so,” Lucas wrote. “These often temporary and simple accommodations should not require the full apparatus of documentation attending disabilities under the ADA.” 

Whether the Trump administration ultimately follows the letter’s lead in its approach to the regulation, it’s safe to say that the current chair won’t be pushing hard for enforcement of rules that she voted to disapprove.

Share This Article: