On April 25, 2024, attorneys general from 17 states filed a lawsuit in federal court against the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) seeking to stop the implementation of the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act’s (PWFA) final regulations, which were published on April 19, 2024. The 17 states include Tennessee, Arkansas, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, and West Virginia.
PWFA Refresher
The PWFA requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations to qualified employees (including applicants) with “known limitations” related to, affected by, or arising out of pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions, unless the accommodation will cause an undue hardship.
Under the PWFA and its regulations, the term “related medical conditions” is defined as “medical conditions which relate to, are affected by, or arise out of pregnancy or childbirth, as applied to the specific employee or applicant in question, including, but not limited to, termination of pregnancy, including via miscarriage, stillbirth, or abortion,” among many other conditions.
Nature of the Lawsuit Against the EEOC
The states challenging the PWFA’s final regulations take issue with their scope, requiring employers to provide reasonable accommodations—absent undue hardship—for pregnancy-related medical conditions and expressly mentions “termination of pregnancy,” including via “abortion.” Calling the final regulations an “unprecedented and unlawful abortion-accommodation statute,” the states are seeking to invalidate the final regulations.
The states cite the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which held states have legitimate interests in regulating abortion, including “respect for and preservation of prenatal life at all stages of development.” The states argue the EEOC’s final regulations “vitiate” these interests by requiring states to “facilitate elective abortions they have chosen to proscribe or else face federal lawsuits for money damages and injunctive relief.”
The states are asking the court to postpone the June 18, 2024, effective date of the final regulations pending judicial review; to stop the EEOC’s enforcement of the final regulation’s “abortion-accommodation mandate”; and to declare the “abortion-accommodation mandate” unlawful.
EEOC’s Position
Although the EEOC hasn’t yet answered the complaint, it did address the public comments that were submitted in response to the proposed regulations on the issue of including abortion in the definition of a pregnancy-related medical condition.
The EEOC indicated that the PWFA is a workplace antidiscrimination law that doesn’t regulate or mandate the provision of abortion services or mandate when and under what circumstances an abortion is permissible.
Bottom Line
Even if a business isn’t located one of the states challenging the lawfulness of the PWFA’s final regulations, any postponement of the regulations’ effective date or court order regarding the abortion-accommodation portion could have have an impact on employees and employers. We’ll continue to monitor the lawsuit as it progresses and provide updates regarding the implementation and scope of the PWFA’s final regulations.
Lauren M. Weber is an attorney with Felhaber Larson in Minneapolis and can be reached at lweber@felhaber.com.