Pregnancy accommodation has moved from a narrow leave-management issue to a core compliance, employee relations, and litigation risk. The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (the “PWFA”) requires covered employers to provide reasonable accommodations for known limitations related to pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions unless doing so would impose an undue hardship. Notably, the PWFA is broader than the traditional disability framework under the ADA because a pregnancy-related limitation does not have to qualify as a disability under the ADA to trigger an employer’s accommodation obligations.
Keep the Simple Requests Simple
Recent public reporting on an Amazon class action lawsuit provides a useful example of how a routine accommodation issue can become a bigger litigation event. According to the complaint’s allegations, Amazon employees sought basic pregnancy-related modifications such as bathroom breaks, extra breaks to eat, or the option to sit as needed, but allegedly encountered weeks of paperwork requests and delayed responses instead of prompt approvals. This fact pattern matters because the EEOC’s PWFA rule identifies certain basic modifications—including water, additional restroom breaks, and sitting or standing as needed—as “predictable assessments” that will, in virtually all cases, be reasonable accommodations that do not impose undue hardship and should be granted without delay.
That is where compliance lessons become practical. When a business routes a predictable request for a chair through the same pipeline as a complex disability claim, the bureaucracy itself can become the problem. The PWFA does not require employers to abandon individualized review, but it does require them to distinguish between requests that need careful operational analysis and requests that should be granted promptly with minimal documentation.
Documentation demands are a particular risk area. While employers may seek supporting documentation when reasonable under the circumstances, any request must be limited to the minimum information needed to confirm the limitation and workplace adjustment. Requiring a doctor’s note for an obvious or routine need may turn a manageable accommodation request into evidence of a flawed process.
Compliance Gaps in Technology
The Amazon allegations also highlight a growing issue for larger employers related to automated timekeeping, productivity, and attendance systems. If a system allegedly treats protected accommodation time as “time off task,” the problem is no longer limited to a single supervisor’s judgment. The PWFA prohibits adverse action when an employee requests or uses a reasonable accommodation, and the EEOC requires employers to account for whether an interim or final accommodation allows the employee to continue working without being penalized.
Put simply, if a system cannot distinguish between someone ignoring job duties and someone taking a protected break, the employer has a compliance issue. That gap can convert a process problem into a federal case, especially where the same coding, productivity, or discipline logic affects multiple employees.
Practical Takeaways as Enforcement Evolves
The practical takeaway for employers is to build a fast-track lane for the simple stuff: water, breaks, seating, food, and other basic modifications. Frontline managers should know when they can say “yes” without requiring a lengthy corporate review, while HR or legal should be engaged to sign off before anyone denies an accommodation, requests additional documentation, or issues discipline tied to pregnancy-related time away from the workstation.
With ongoing EEOC enforcement activity and an evolving labor and employment regulatory landscape, employers that invest in getting their accommodation process right now will be better positioned than those that wait for a complaint to land in front of them. In these situations, the gap between the law and process implemented is exactly where liability lives, and proactive remediation will almost always be more effective than playing defense after the fact.
Hannah L. Sfameni is a Senior Associate & Director of Compliance at DarrowEverett LLP.