A pregnant worker asked her manager for a stool so she could sit during long shifts, and instead of a stool she was told to go home on unpaid leave until the baby came. Under federal law, that response is now backwards. Since 2023, employers of a certain size have been required to work with pregnant employees on reasonable accommodations that let them keep their jobs and their paychecks, and pushing someone onto unpaid leave when a simpler fix exists is exactly what the law was written to stop.
What the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act actually requires
The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, known as the PWFA, took effect on June 27, 2023, and its final regulations became enforceable in June 2024. Enforced by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the law requires employers with 15 or more employees to provide reasonable accommodations for a worker’s known limitations related to pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions, unless doing so would impose an undue hardship on the business. The key word is reasonable: the accommodation has to be workable for both sides, but the default is that the worker stays on the job with an adjustment, not that the job disappears.
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The accommodations a worker can ask for by name
Part of what makes the PWFA useful is that the accommodations are concrete, not vague. The EEOC lists the kinds of adjustments employers are expected to consider, and they tend to be small changes with real value on a household budget because they keep a paycheck intact. Common examples include light duty or limits on heavy lifting, more frequent or longer breaks, a stool or chair to sit during a shift that is normally done standing, and permission to keep a water bottle at a workstation. Others include time off for medical appointments, the option to work remotely where the job allows it, adjusted schedules, and, when nothing else works, temporary reassignment to a different role.
Because the list is broad, the worker does not have to guess whether a request is legitimate. If a limitation tied to pregnancy or a related condition makes part of the job hard, an adjustment that addresses it is the kind of thing the law expects the employer to weigh seriously rather than dismiss.
How the request is supposed to work
The process starts with the worker asking, and it is worth putting the request in writing so there is a record of what was asked and when. Once an employee raises a limitation and a possible accommodation, the employer is expected to engage in what the law calls the interactive process, a back-and-forth to find a workable solution. An employer generally cannot skip that conversation and simply force the worker onto unpaid leave if another reasonable accommodation would let them keep working. Unpaid leave is meant to be closer to a last resort than a first response, because leave without pay is exactly the outcome that costs a household money.
An employer can decline an accommodation only if it would cause an undue hardship, meaning a significant difficulty or expense given the size and resources of the business. That is a real standard the employer has to meet, not a phrase they can invoke to avoid the conversation. A separate federal law, the PUMP Act, adds its own protections for nursing mothers after the baby arrives, including reasonable break time and a private space to express milk, so the coverage does not end at childbirth.
What to do if an accommodation is denied
When an employer refuses a reasonable request, ignores it, or retaliates against the worker for asking, the PWFA is enforced through the same channel as other federal job-discrimination laws. The worker can file a charge of discrimination with the EEOC, and there are deadlines for doing so, generally measured in a matter of months from the date of the problem, which is why acting promptly matters. Filing a charge is a required first step before most lawsuits under these laws, and the agency can investigate, attempt to resolve the dispute, and in some cases pursue it further.
Keeping documentation strengthens any claim: a copy of the written accommodation request, the employer’s response, dates, and the names of anyone involved. For a pregnant worker weighing whether to speak up, the practical stakes are straightforward. The law is designed so that a stool, a break, or a lifting limit keeps a paycheck coming instead of ending it, and the tools to enforce that are free and run through a federal agency built for the job.
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by a human editor. Figures are linked to their primary sources; where a claim could not be verified from the public record, we say so.
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