EEOC: Pregnant Employee’s Firing Unlawful

Some employers still don’t get it when it comes to female employees who are pregnant. It is illegal to fire them because of their pregnancy! End of discussion. Or it should be, but these cases keep cropping up. Some day maybe we will reach critical mass and the rights of pregnant employees to keep working will be respected.

A Fort Wayne, Indiana product and service store violated Title VII when it fired an employee after she informed her manager of her pregnancy, the EEOC charged in a lawsuit filed this week.

According to the commission, the employee’s final task was to train her replacement, an office employee Office Concepts hired only in anticipation of her departure. Immediately after firing the employee, Office Concepts hired another new employee. Neither new employee was pregnant, the EEOC said.

“To deny a woman employment because she is pregnant places her and her family in a position of immeasurable harm,” said Laurie A. Young, EEOC regional attorney for the Indianapolis District Office. “Women employees have the right to work in an environment free of bias and adverse actions because of their pregnancy. The EEOC continues, with this suit, to seek vigorous enforcement of the laws that protect all women from this kind of discrimination.”

Read more about the case.

 

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