In a perfect world, everyone in the workplace would rally to help a pregnant coworker. The employee could mobilize the help of her colleagues by disclosing to them that she is pregnant; before she did this, they would stay out of her business about the recent changes to her wardrobe and food preferences. No one would ask her how old she was or how much her fertility treatments cost, especially if she never said that she had undergone fertility treatments. Her coworkers would not give her unsolicited advice about midwives, C-section birth, breastfeeding, sleep training, diapers, or anything else unless she asked. When the baby was born, the employee’s coworkers would reminisce about when their own children were babies. They would not make snide comments when the employee got phone calls during work from the baby’s daycare. Of course, everyone knows that it does not work that way. Mothers and pregnant women are magnets for criticism from everyone and have to work twice as hard to prove to everyone that they are not playing the working mother card as an excuse to be lazy, disorganized, or short-tempered.
Working while pregnant is hard, only slightly less hard than sitting at home and panicking about money because you don’t have a job while pregnant, but if there is anything in which you can take consolation, it is that you live in Colorado, which has more robust laws for pregnant employees than some other states. The Boulder pregnancy discrimination lawyers at HKM Employment Attorneys LLP can help you if your employer has treated you unfairly because of your pregnancy.
What Do Discrimination Laws and Accommodations Have to Do With Pregnancy?
Federal and state laws count pregnancy as a protected characteristic, which is a personal characteristic that employers are forbidden to use as a reason for taking an adverse action against an employee. Adverse actions include refusal to hire, denial of promotions, termination of employment, or even just being unpleasant to you consistently enough that it creates a hostile work environment. Other examples of protected characteristics include age, race, religion, and national origin.
Employers cannot discriminate against you because you are pregnant, just like they cannot discriminate against you because of your race, marital status, or any other protected characteristic. That is not the full extent of the implications of pregnancy for employment discrimination law, though. Disability is also a protected characteristic, and employers must make reasonable accommodations for employees with disabilities when the employees request them. Likewise, some pregnant employees in some jobs require accommodations, and Colorado law requires employers to make these accommodations when necessary.
The Colorado Pregnant Workers’ Fairness Act
The Colorado Pregnant Workers’ Fairness Act outlines the responsibilities that employers in the state of Colorado have to make reasonable accommodations for employees when an employee needs accommodations because of her pregnancy. These are some accommodations considered reasonable under the Colorado Pregnant Workers’ Fairness Act:
- Longer or more frequent breaks during the employee’s work shift
- Allowing food and beverages at the employee’s workstation, where these would not ordinarily be allowed
- Reassigning duties that involve heavy lifting or other strenuous manual labor
- Modifying the employee’s work schedule to allow for frequent doctors’ appointments
- Modifying the work environment so that the employee can spend most of the workday sitting down
Colorado law requires employers to post notices about the Pregnant Workers’ Fairness Act in a location in the workplace where employees can easily see it.
The law requires employers to make reasonable accommodations for pregnant employees when the employee requests the accommodations. Employees can also request accommodations when they have recently given birth. For example, after an employee returns from FMLA leave after her baby’s birth, she can request breaks during work to pump breast milk.
Reasonable accommodations are not one size fits all. The employee should first tell the employer what accommodation she needs, and the employer should provide the accommodation within the limits of the employer’s budget and capabilities. If you work for a small business, your employer might not be able to make the same accommodations that a large corporation could make. The Pregnant Workers’ Fairness Act explicitly forbids employers from imposing accommodations on pregnant employees when the employee did not request the accommodation.
Is it Pregnancy Discrimination if the Discriminatory if You Were Not Pregnant When the Discriminatory Action Occurred?
Discriminatory acts rarely occur one at a time, and employees who face discrimination at work often cite in their discrimination complaints that the discrimination covered more than one protected characteristic. For example, a discrimination lawsuit by one employee might cite that the employee faced discrimination because of his race, sexual orientation, and national origin.
Likewise, if everyone seems to be going out of their way to make your life difficult while you are pregnant, you are probably aware that this started long before you became pregnant. Employers are not allowed to ask job candidates their age, marital status, or whether they have children or intend to have children in the future. Despite this, when young women apply for jobs, they can often feel the employer doing mental calculations about when the job applicant will go on maternity leave in the future and how burdensome this will be for the employer. Every woman who applied for a job when she was younger than 40 has probably experienced this.
Age discrimination laws only protect employees above age 40, and while birth rates for women in their 40s have been rising, this is probably not the protected characteristic you should cite if you have faced current and future motherhood discrimination. You can, however, cite discrimination based on your sex, marital status, and pregnancy. The Boulder pregnancy discrimination lawyers at HKM Employment Attorneys LLP can help you get justice, no matter the nature of the discrimination.
Contact HKM Employment Attorneys, LLP, About National Origin Discrimination
The Boulder employment lawyers at HKM Employment Attorneys, LLP can counsel you about pregnancy discrimination claims. Contact the employment lawyers at HKM Employment Attorneys LLP in Boulder, Colorado, to set up a consultation.
