“Nurse-ins” have been in the news recently, as mothers stage peaceful protests aimed at promoting women’s rights to breast-feed their children in public. These events should prompt in-house counsel to examine their companies’ breast-feeding policies, including how their companies handle employees who need time to attend to breast-feeding responsibilities while at work and how employees interact with customers who are nursing.
Let’s start with what the legal department should know about handling employees’ breast-feeding issues. In March 2010, President Barack Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) and the Reconciliation Act of 2010. PPACA §4207 amends §7 of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) to require an employer to provide reasonable break time for a non-exempt employee to express breast milk for her nursing child for one year after the child’s birth each time such employee has need to express milk. The employer is not required to compensate an employee receiving reasonable break time for the purpose of expressing milk. However, when an employer already provides compensated breaks, an employee who uses that break time to express milk must be compensated the same as other employees.
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