Republican EEOC Commissioner Andrea Lucas is deploying a rarely used agency procedure to silently initiate targeted discrimination probes against at least three companies providing their employees with abortion travel benefits, five attorneys who have seen the charges told Bloomberg Law.
The “commissioner charges” allege that the employers are favoring workers seeking abortions while discriminating against pregnant workers and disabled workers because they are not offering equivalent benefits for their medical needs, according to the attorneys.
The US Supreme Court’s June 24 Dobbs decision triggered abortion bans in several states, as well as an outpouring of pledges from more than 120 large employers—including major banks, retailers, and tech companies—to cover employee travel needed to obtain abortions in their health-care plans.
The five lawyers, who among them have seen three separate charges signed by Lucas, represent employers that offer abortion travel reimbursement as a benefit and asked that their names not be used for fear of harming professional relationships. They declined to disclose their clients’ names for the same reason.
Lucas’s arguments mirror those made by the agency’s former general counsel, Sharon Fast Gustafson, in a letter sent to employers with such policies last month. The discrimination-based arguments espoused in the charges and the...
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