Pregnancy Accommodation Review: Nine Questions the Morning It Lands

The library already has an ADA playbook and an FMLA–ADA tree. Teams still run pregnancy through those — the wrong forms, leave as the default, a doctor’s note for a stool. This is the morning-of review. It is not those pages. It is not a rights pamphlet.

1. What did she actually ask for?

   The Slack is almost never the word “accommodation.” It is “I need to sit.” It is “I’m nauseous on this shift.” It is a pumping request in the break room, or a lifting limit said out loud because the tote is heavier than last month.

   That is the request. She does not need a form, a diagnosis, or the name of a statute. Once a manager knows she is pregnant — or recovering, or pumping — and wants something changed because of it, the clock is running. Write what she said, in her words, before anyone turns it into a process.

2. Can you grant it this morning?

   For a pregnant employee, four changes are almost always yes — today, without a committee and without a note:

   • Water at the station.
   • Extra restroom breaks.
   • Sitting if the job is standing, standing if the job is sitting.
   • Breaks to eat and drink.

   A glass of water that takes ten days is how a small ask becomes a record.

   Pumping is not one of those four. It still does not need a note. It needs time and a room that is not a bathroom. Do not wait for a form.

3. Are you running ADA intake on a pregnancy request?

   Do not ask whether this “substantially limits a major life activity.” That is the wrong statute, and the intake form will prove you used it. Pregnancy itself is not a disability. This statute does not require one. She told you she needs something because of the pregnancy. That is enough to start.

   A six-page ADA questionnaire, a fitness-for-duty form, a request for diagnosis and prognosis — that packet is how careful employers walk into this. Ask for the minimum you actually need, and only when you actually need it. You do not need it when the need is obvious, when you already have it, when the ask is one of the four above, when she needs to pump — or when you would not ask a non-pregnant employee for a note to get the same change. A doctor’s note to sit down is documentation theater. The note does not make the file safer. It makes the delay visible.

   If the first move is the ADA medical questionnaire, stop and start over. Use the ADA playbook when you actually have a disability. Do not start there because the request involves a body.

4. What other statute just walked in with it?

   FMLA is leave. The PUMP Act is time and a room that is not a bathroom, for one year after birth. Title VII asks whether you treated her worse than someone similar in ability to work. This statute asks whether you can change the job so she can keep working.

   In the room	The question it asks	Reach
   This statute (the PWFA)	Can you change the job so she can keep working?	15 or more employees
   Title VII	Did you treat her worse than someone similar in ability to work?	15 or more employees
   FMLA	Is this leave — and does she qualify for it?	50 or more employees, plus employee eligibility tests
   PUMP Act	Break time and a private space that is not a bathroom?	Nearly all employees, for one year after birth
   Michigan ELCRA · Ohio Ch. 4112	Who else got the break — especially occupational-injury-only light duty?	Michigan: all employers · Ohio: 4 or more

   The same Slack can be all four. You do not need to brief all four. You do need to know which ones are in the room so you do not “solve” this by stepping on one of the others. If two laws apply, use the one that protects her more. Do not hand her three packets for one Slack.

   A sit-down request is not an FMLA event. A pumping request is not a favor you schedule when convenient. Federal law is the floor. This statute applies at fifteen employees. Below that, do not assume this statute applies.

   Michigan and Ohio do not have their own version of this statute. They still have equal-treatment rules that reach smaller shops. Those rules ask who else got the break — especially a light-duty policy written only for occupational injuries. They do not create a separate duty to accommodate.

   Paste-ready handbook language for those Michigan and Ohio equal-treatment rules is in the Michigan handbook addendum and the Ohio handbook addendum.

5. Are you about to send her home?

   Leave is an accommodation when she wants it, or when nothing else works. It is not the default, and it is not a kindness. You may not put her on leave if another change would let her keep working.

   “Take FMLA until after the baby” is often the sentence that turns a stool request into a charge. Attendance points that swallow prenatal appointments are the same sentence in a different font. If a schedule change, a stool, a lifting limit, or a remote day would keep her working, offering leave first is the decision a jury will remember. Sending her home feels careful. It reads as a refusal.

6. What does this job actually require?

   “We’ve always done it this way” is not an essential function. Name what matters this month — the lifting, the standing, the hours, the license, the client-facing piece — and test the ask against those, not against the unofficial culture of the role.

   The old first move was to treat her like anyone else with a twenty-pound lifting restriction. If the warehouse never created light duty for a bad back, it did not have to create it for a pregnancy. That is the wrong first sentence now. This statute does not ask whether you accommodate other people. It asks whether you can accommodate her — including, for a while, by taking an essential function off her plate.

   If the job can be done another way for a few months, it probably should be. The only options are not “full duty” or “go home.”

7. If you’re saying no, what’s the hardship in one sentence?

   A supervisor saying the line can’t spare her is a fact to check, not a conclusion. Hardship means significant difficulty or expense you can explain, measured against the company you actually have. Five extra restroom minutes on a large payroll is not that. A forty-dollar stool is not that.

   Write the sentence: what it costs, whom it breaks, why a lesser change fails. If you are parking an essential function, say for how long, whether someone else can do it, and whether it can wait. If you cannot write that sentence without wincing, you do not have a no yet. You have an inconvenience.

8. Who is deciding, and who is just being told?

   The manager does not get to freelance a no, and the whole team does not need a medical story. HR or counsel should see anything that is not one of the four easy yeses. Tell the manager what to do. Tell colleagues only what they need in order to work around the change. Her condition is not a staff announcement.

   Talk to her, not only about her. Ask what she needs. Try something. Write down what you tried. Delay while the request sits in an inbox can violate the statute even if you later say yes. Pregnancy does not wait for a thirty-day file.

9. What goes in the file — and what doesn’t?

   Date of the ask, what she requested, what you offered, what she chose, and why anything was refused. Not a narrative about her pregnancy. Not a manager’s theory about whether she can “handle it.” Not an email chain that debates her.

   The file should read like you solved a workplace problem. If it reads like you managed a problem employee, rewrite it. If you would not send this email if her lawyer already had it, do not send it.

Use note

This is a morning-of review for in-house counsel and the HR lead who will print it. It is general information, not legal advice, and not a substitute for the statute — the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, 42 U.S.C. § 2000gg — the EEOC rule, or counsel on the edge cases.

Title VII still governs unequal treatment. The ADA still governs disability. FMLA still governs leave. The PUMP Act still governs time and space to pump. A federal court has vacated the part of the EEOC’s rule that read “related medical conditions” to include elective abortion, and other edges of the rule are still being litigated — get counsel there. Do not treat a pending challenge to the statute as a reason to wait.

Primary sources: 42 U.S.C. § 2000gg · EEOC final rule, 29 C.F.R. Part 1636 · EEOC, What You Should Know About the PWFA