As of June 27, 2023, the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA) significantly expanded protections for pregnant applicants and employees by requiring employers with 15 or more employees to make reasonable accommodations to known limitations related to pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions, whether or not such condition qualifies as a disability, as long as the accommodation does not pose an undue hardship on the employer.

Overview of the PWFA

As background, the PWFA expands the pregnancy-related protections of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, which amended Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII) to protect employees from discrimination based on pregnancy or related conditions but does not impose an accommodation obligation. It also expands on current case law, which requires only that employers accommodate pregnant employees in the same manner they accommodate other employees who are similar in their inability to work. The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2015 decision in Young v. United Parcel Service held that employers who provided accommodations for other similarly situated workers with medical restrictions could not deny comparable accommodations to pregnant workers, but the ruling did not go as far as requiring pregnancy-related accommodation independent of such comparator situations. The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations to qualified individuals with certain medical conditions related to pregnancy that qualify as a disability. The PWFA is intended to fill the gap by affirmatively requiring reasonable accommodations for conditions associated with pregnancy or childbirth that do not rise to the level of disability under the ADA.

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