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.
I hate that I was told I worried too much. That women’s rights were enshrined. That nothing would take away Roe v Wade. That women have enough equality, that we’re just whining about our privilege.
I hate that they were wrong.
Fuck anyone in my path that tells me I’m overreacting to these types of attacks.
I feel your pain, not only about women’s rights, but I’ve been screaming about everything for a decade and continually told I was crazy.
To quote another famous predictor of catastrophic failures, “Boy do I hate being right all the time”
It’s the worst type of “I told you so” ever
It’s a very weird position to be in to actively hope your powers of observation have failed and you have lost your mind to paranoia, and then receiving the “good news” that you are in fact sane but reality is nightmarish
I don’t remember where I heard it, but it’s something like:
The path to fascism is paved with “you’re overreacting.”
Hyperbolic was the word i had to look up in 2008. I have never forgotten how racist and misogynistic this country is not only through tradition, but in law…
For what its worth, you’re not. Even saying something like ‘dont burn yourself out’ instead sounds anywhere from flippant to demeaning, because frankly there’s no two ways about this.
It’s their systematic plan to strip away women’s rights. Its an existential threat that cant be ignored, and yet so many other women out there are willingly throwing themselves in the path of the steam roller.
I guess I have to be glad I can somewhat live with how I am, because transitioning into their target demographic seems so much worse.