The Trump administration is preparing to scale back workplace accommodations for women related to pregnancy and reproductive health, seven people with knowledge of discussions of the plans said. The moves will limit the impact of a 2022 law that was meant to fill a gap in disability and discrimination protections that employees are guaranteed at workplaces. It was intended to provide accommodations for pregnant workers, such as bathroom and water breaks, reprieves from heavy lifting or time off for prenatal appointments.
But the scope of the regulations under the law, known as the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, has been debated since their drafting. Conservatives, even some who supported the law, said the rule that Equal Employment Opportunity Commission wrote to apply the law reached far beyond pregnancy to cover matters including abortion, fertility treatment and related procedures and conditions it was not meant to protect.
Narrowing them would fit with other efforts by Andrea Lucas, the E.E.O.C.’s chair, to roll back what she has called the liberal excesses of the Biden administration. The E.E.O.C. has targeted corporate diversity, equity and inclusion programs, abandoned some discrimination cases and stopped enforcing workplace protections for transgender workers. It is of a piece with a suite of executive actions that are remaking the American workplace by halting enforcement of sexual harassment rules and encouraging fewer mothers to work outside the home.
The E.E.O.C. plans to publish the proposed narrowing of conditions eligible for accommodations as soon as this month.
Ms. Lucas is not expected to eliminate requirements that most directly protect women during pregnancy, said the people familiar with her plans who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the planned changes are not final. But she could eliminate explicit protections for conditions that affect women who are not pregnant, the people said. Since Mr. Trump appointed Ms. Lucas as chair in 2025, the E.E.O.C. has brought dozens of cases and enforcement actions involving pregnancy-related discrimination, but she has said that she disapproves of the rule’s reach.
“The rule fundamentally errs in conflating pregnancy and childbirth accommodation with accommodation of the female sex, that is, female biology and reproduction,” Ms. Lucas said in 2024.
The E.E.O.C. said it would not comment on potential regulatory changes.
The data shows when workers have paid leave and time off for new children they are more productive and it works in other countries, and would here too, but the selfish types don’t want good things for others and vote maga. More to learn on it: How do the policies in high quality of life and high democratic countries, like healthcare for all, paid leave for workers and time off for newborns, work out well for employers and workers?
Who says that’s their goal? Their goal is to force the women out of the workplace and making them stay at home wives.
I don’t even understand how any woman would ever vote Republican, most certainly for donnie. People are certainly complicated, I guess, but have they even heard the sorts of things that conservative men say about women, often framed as a “haha, only serious” kind of way?
Conservative men are butthurt about not only bodily autonomy, but also: the right to vote, no fault divorce, and financial autonomy. They already reversed bodily autonomy that was in place for 50 years, the others could be reversed, too.
If women don’t think that at least some conservative men are dead serious about putting women back “in their place”, they are absolutely kidding themselves. And yes, that means conservative cishet white xtian women, too. It’s not just blue haired liberal lesbian witches.
If childcare is immensely expensive, if jobs are harder to do while pregnant, if women have to spend more time out of the workforce to have kids, that is not something conservatives are all that sad about as far as their plots and schemes.
I don’t even understand how any woman would ever vote Republican
Religious cult indoctrination. A.k.a. the cycle of abuse.
Silly GOP. You’re supposed to blurt this out after the midterms are done!
Aren’t these the same people that decry the low birth rate?
They also want women to stay at home, though. So having them forced to carry the baby and then lose their job plays nicely into their goal of forcing every woman to be a stay at home wife.
They’re more likely to put up with domestic abuse if they’re completely reliant on the man, you know.
Thats the point. They don’t want (white Christian) women working at all, they want them popping out ethnically correct cannon fodder.
Why be subtle? Why not just skip to the part where you seize women’s bank accounts and forbid companies from hiring them?
Or the part where you can have your wife or daughter locked up for life in an insane asylum for arguing with you.
More evidence that conservatives don’t actually want to increase the birth rate.
They want to decrease employment of women
This also allows them an avenue to punish women who’ve had abortions:
The law gained significance after the Supreme Court struck down federal abortion rights in 2022. Abortion has since been banned or restricted in 13 states, leading more women to travel across state lines to terminate pregnancies. Current regulations require employers to accommodate workers’ leave for the procedure, including time off for travel.
The E.E.O.C. could cut the list of “related medical conditions,” putting the matter to employers and courts to decide, some of the people familiar with the matter said. They also said wider religious exemptions are under consideration that would allow employers to refuse accommodations to workers whose medical conditions are deemed incompatible with their beliefs, the people said.
“It’s social engineering disguised as bureaucratic rule making,” said Inimai Chettiar, president of A Better Balance, an organization that led the campaign for the law’s passage.
So if I make up a religion called Assholes of God that sincerely believes cancer/heart disease/infection is God’s will, my company doesn’t have to accommodate treatment for it anymore? Why would any amoral company not become Assholes of God and list every medical condition as exempt from accommodation?
Trans people scare them so much because it proves there is really only one difference between the sexes. One is a pussy, the other can give birth…
Oh they do, they just don’t think a woman should have a life outside of child-rearing
It’s amazing to watch the country regress in real time…
I hate that I was told I worried too much. That women’s rights were enshrined. That nothing would take away Roe v Wade. That women have enough equality, that we’re just whining about our privilege.
I hate that they were wrong.
Fuck anyone in my path that tells me I’m overreacting to these types of attacks.
I don’t remember where I heard it, but it’s something like:
The path to fascism is paved with “you’re overreacting.”I feel your pain, not only about women’s rights, but I’ve been screaming about everything for a decade and continually told I was crazy.
To quote another famous predictor of catastrophic failures, “Boy do I hate being right all the time”
It’s the worst type of “I told you so” ever
It’s a very weird position to be in to actively hope your powers of observation have failed and you have lost your mind to paranoia, and then receiving the “good news” that you are in fact sane but reality is nightmarish
Hyperbolic was the word i had to look up in 2008. I have never forgotten how racist and misogynistic this country is not only through tradition, but in law…
For what its worth, you’re not. Even saying something like ‘dont burn yourself out’ instead sounds anywhere from flippant to demeaning, because frankly there’s no two ways about this.
It’s their systematic plan to strip away women’s rights. Its an existential threat that cant be ignored, and yet so many other women out there are willingly throwing themselves in the path of the steam roller.
I guess I have to be glad I can somewhat live with how I am, because transitioning into their target demographic seems so much worse.
Only penises can have power, don’t you get it you pussies? /s ffs
Kill 'em all.
