Moms Can be Fired for Pumping Breastmilk at Work

Photo by Joost Assink

Your employer may have the right to prevent you from what’s doing what’s best for your baby’s health. 

A Texas judge has ruled that federal laws allowing employees to attend to family medical needs and prohibiting sex-based discrimination don’t apply to breastfeeding women who want to pump milk during the work day.

Donnica Venters, a mom who lost her job in 2009 after asking for permission to pump breastmilk in the back office of Houston Funding Corp., lost her Equal Employment Opportunity Commission case earlier this month when U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes found that “firing someone because of lactation or breast-pumping is not sex discrimination.”

“Lactation is not pregnancy, childbirth or a related medical condition,” Hughes ruled, confirming federal court rulings that date back to the 1980s.

Breastfeeding may not be a “medical condition” as defined by federal courts, but at least 15 states and the District of Columbia have passed laws protecting women’s right to pump or nurse on the job. Pennsylvania attorney Jake Aryeh Marcus created breastfeedinglaw.com to share state-by-state information about workplace laws, and to present mothers with additional facts about breastfeeding rights and protections.

More than three in four American women follow doctors’ recommendations and try nursing their newborns rather than feeding them formula, according to the U.S. Center for Disease Control. Breastfed babies are less likely to develop asthma, obesity or type 2-diabetes than their formula-fed peers. But most mothers don’t stick with it for as long as doctors recommend, often because of the challenges of juggling work with breastfeeding. CDC figures show that babies are breastfed longer in states where pumping is allowed on the job.

Court rulings, like the one out of Texas, have led lactation activists to push for a national Breastfeeding Promotion Act, which would protect workers like Venters. But that bill, first drafted a decade ago, “has sadly died in committee in every legislative session,” Marcus said.

Jake Aryeh Marcus

Women who plan to pump after they have a baby can protect themselves by first researching whether their home state offers legal protections at breastfeedinglaw.com.

In some cases, they may also be protected by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act – better known as the healthcare reform bill – which requires most employers to give most employees time and space to express milk. Because those rules went into effect in 2010, they did not apply to the recent Texas ruling, which related to a 2009 incident. Even now, small companies don’t always have to give workers time and space to pump, and employees exempt from overtime law don’t get the same protections as their colleagues.

Read more about workplace protections for breastfeeding mothers.

If you are not being allowed time and space to breastfeed at work , you should consult an employment attorney to see if your employer is complying with all the laws that apply to your situation.