Although pregnancy is not typically viewed as a disability, employers must nevertheless provide reasonable accommodations to pregnant employees under a number of new and proposed state and local laws. The New York City Council recently passed such a law through an amendment to the New York City Human Rights Law. Similar legislation is pending in New York state, New Jersey and Philadelphia. In Maryland a similar law took effect in October of last year. At the federal level, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has indicated in its Strategic Enforcement Plan that pregnancy discrimination is one of its key enforcement priorities, characterizing “accommodating pregnancy-related limitations” as a “developing issue.”
Why all the attention to this topic now, nearly 35 years after the passage of the federal Pregnancy Discrimination Act (“PDA”)? Part of the explanation is that the percentage of women in the workforce has increased dramatically—from 29 percent in 1950, to 43 percent in 1980 to 47 percent in 2012. Needless to say, many of these women become pregnant during their employment.
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