Pregnancy Discrimination

Mounting research demonstrates that child care providers are facing a serious crisis, which will have long term implications for women’s rights and the workforce.

There currently is no scientific evidence that COVID-19 creates an increased risk for adverse outcomes for pregnant women. That said, pregnant women may be more susceptible to respiratory infections, including COVID-19, and should practice precautions.

In 2018, Governor Cuomo signed a law that banned many NDAs and mandatory arbitration for complaints, but some activists and policymakers argued that the state had focused too narrowly on sexual harassment, and the 2019 laws expanded the 2018 laws to include protections against NDAs in other forms of workplace discrimination.

Sometimes reality is too real for Hollywood and the culture machine, as was demonstrated when ABC and the Academy decided not to air an ad dealing straightforwardly with the reality of postpartum life. The ad for Frida Mom, a retailer in the baby and new mother field, depicted a women confronting in a realistic manner the stress and changes that occur for new mothers.

Who should foot the bill or take responsibility for social reproduction as more women were pressed into the workforce, government or the individual? In the US, the answer was resounding: the individual. And this has had significant consequences for working parents since. By placing the responsibility on the individual, almost always the mother, parents have been in a bind for decades and any "choices" available reside in an astonishingly thin sliver of options constrained by structural inequalities

Two lawsuits were filed against Frontier airlines alleging that the Company required pregnant employees to suspend work duties months before they were scheduled to give birth, forcing employees to use their vacation days in lieu of paid time off, take unpaid maternity leave without Frontier providing alternatives for work, and refuse to accommodate breastfeeding and pregnant workers.

More than 125,600 New Yorkers used Paid Family Leave in 2018. Learn more about upcoming changes to the program, and from the largest US study on Paid Family Leave.

Exercising your rights to pump at work.

An international law firm is facing a class action lawsuit after female associates allege that the firm harms the careers of pregnant women and new mothers.

Check out Berke-Weiss Associate Alex Berke discussing New York City’s new lactation room law in Mindr!

New York City has expanded on existing requirements to provide lactation rooms to employees who express milk for up to three years following child birth.

Laurie Berke-Weiss and Alex Berke were quoted in a recent Law360 article about minimizing legal risk for employers around parental leave issues.