Trump Administration Said to Plan Rolling Back Pregnancy-Related Job Protections
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.
