The law extends protections to 9 million additional lactating parents and allows workers to sue their employer if they are not compliant.
Published
April 28, 2023, 6:58 a.m. PT
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The PUMP Act, a bill designed to extend workplace protections to an additional 9 million nursing parents, goes into full effect on Friday.
Now, workers will be able to sue their employers if they are not compliant with the law, which requires businesses to provide a private space that’s not a bathroom and adequate break time for workers to express breastmilk. The bill passed Congress with bipartisan support in December.
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The PUMP Act will close loopholes and “unintentional” mistakes in a 2010 bill, the Break Time for Nursing Mothers Act, said Liz Morris, the deputy director of the Center for WorkLife Law, which helped draft the model legislation the PUMP Act is based on. Previously, protections only extended to hourly workers who qualified for overtime, but even then, it restricted any restitution workers could seek. If workers wanted to sue their employer, there was no legal mechanism to do so. Now, the majority of those covered has expanded to also include salaried workers, such as teachers and nurses, most of whom are women.
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