On Tuesday, a new federal law that requires employers to provide “reasonable accommodations” for pregnant and postpartum workers went into effect, expanding protections for millions of people.
The law, called the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, has been more than a decade in the making. It was first introduced in Congress in 2012 and reintroduced in almost every legislative session since. The act passed with bipartisan support in December 2022, in large part thanks to growing awareness of the country’s worsening maternal health outcomes and the lack of support for working mothers, said Dina Bakst, the co-president of A Better Balance, a national advocacy organization that helped Congress draft the new law.
The P.W.F.A. builds on the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, which was enacted more than 40 years ago but was so riddled with loopholes that pregnancy discrimination has remained rampant, Ms. Bakst said. Often, at the heart of such discrimination is a lack of accommodations. According to a 2022 poll by the Bipartisan Policy Center, 23 percent of mothers considered leaving their jobs because of a lack of reasonable accommodations or fear of discrimination. Every year, thousands of pregnant workers file complaints with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleging discrimination. According to the agency, at least a third of the more than 2,000 pregnancy discrimination complaints it received last year were based on a lack of reasonable accommodations.
This new law...
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