NEW YORK (KeynoteUSA) — A federal judge on Monday granted the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, as well as employers in two Southern states, temporary relief from complying with a federal rule that would have required them to provide workers with time off and other work benefits. adaptations for abortions.
Judge David Joseph granted the preliminary injunction in two consolidated lawsuits, one filed by the attorneys general of Louisiana and Mississippi, and the other filed by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Catholic University and two Catholic dioceses.
The lawsuits challenge rules issued in April by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which declared that abortions are among pregnancy-related conditions covered by the Fairness for Pregnant Workers Act, which passed in December. 2022 and came into force last year.
The EEOC rules go into effect Tuesday.
Joseph, who was appointed to the position by former President Donald Trump, prohibited the EEOC from enforcing the abortion provision of its rules against Catholic plaintiffs and employers located in Louisiana and Mississippi for the duration of the lawsuit.
His ruling came just days after a federal judge in Arkansas dismissed a similar lawsuit brought by 17 states led by Arkansas and Tennessee. Eastern District of Arkansas U.S. District Judge DP Marshall, Jr., who was appointed to the bench by former President Barack Obama, ruled that the states lacked standing to bring the lawsuit.
“The District Court applied a common sense interpretation of the plain words of the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act,” Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said in an emailed statement.
The Louisiana ruling was a partial victory for the attorneys general of Louisiana and Mississippi, who had sought a much broader emergency injunction that would have prevented the entirety of the EEOC’s rules from taking effect nationwide. That request had alarmed some civil rights and women’s rights groups, who warned that EEOC rules are critical to successful implementation of the law.
In an amicus brief, the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Women’s Law Center, along with more than 20 women’s and labor advocacy groups, cited dozens of cases of pregnant workers whose employers have continued to resist grant them accommodations, and said the EEOC rules provided clarity for dispute resolution.
“The court has left some pregnant workers who need abortion-related accommodations to fend for themselves,” said Gaylynn Burroughs, vice president of Workplace Justice and Education at the NWLC.
Rachel Shanklin, national director of women’s entrepreneurship for most small businesses, said even Monday’s limited ruling would have a big impact by making it “more difficult, at least temporarily, for women in the workplace to access employment services.” abortion.”
“Our research consistently finds that women entrepreneurs said the ability to choose whether and when to start a family plays an important role in their ability to advance their careers and launch their small businesses,” Shanklin said in a statement.
Dina Bakst, co-founder and president of the legal advocacy group A Better Balance, which led a decade-long campaign for the law, condemned the ruling in Louisiana, saying it “ignored decades of legal precedent” interpreting medical conditions related to pregnancy as including abortion.
However, she emphasized that it was “important for pregnant and postpartum workers to understand that this ruling does not mean that their rights under the PWFA have been taken away,” given the limited scope of the court order.
The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act passed with broad bipartisan support in December 2022 after a decade-long campaign by women’s rights advocates, who hailed it as a victory for low-wage workers who They have routinely been denied accommodations for everything from time off for medical appointments to the ability to sit or stand at work.
But many Republican lawmakers, including Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, who co-sponsored the bill, were infuriated when the EEOC claimed the law covered abortions. The two Republican commissioners of the five-member EEOC voted against the rules.
In its regulations, the EEOC said its inclusion of abortion is consistent with its own decades-old interpretation of pregnancy-related discrimination law, along with numerous court rulings supporting that interpretation.
The regulations also specify that the rules do not require any employer to provide health care coverage for abortions and the most likely accommodation request would be time off to undergo the procedure or recover from any complications. The EEOC has said that any situation in which an accommodation request may conflict with state laws will be examined “on a case-by-case basis.”
In their lawsuit, the attorneys general said that “the EEOC is forcing states like Louisiana and Mississippi to go against state law and effectively facilitate abortion.”
Mississippi prohibits most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Louisiana has a near-total ban on abortion, with exemptions when there is a substantial risk of death or impediment to the patient continuing the pregnancy and in cases where the fetus has a fatal anomaly.
In its lawsuit, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said it had publicly endorsed the Fairness for Pregnant Workers Act because lawmakers had emphasized its uncontroversial nature, and some expressly stated that it would not require licensing for elective abortions.
Laura Wolk Slavis, an attorney representing Catholic groups, said “the EEOC hijacked a bipartisan protection for pregnant women and their babies by imposing a national abortion accommodation mandate.” She said the ruling was a “crucial step” in restoring the law “to its purpose.”
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