Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin and the Division on Civil Rights issued guidance today to clarify the comprehensive anti-discrimination protections available under the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination (LAD), as expanded by the New Jersey Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, for employees who are pregnant, postpartum, breastfeeding, or lactating or who experience related medical conditions.
As the guidance explains, New Jersey law requires most employers in New Jersey to make reasonable accommodations for pregnant, postpartum, breastfeeding, or lactating employees unless they can show that doing so poses an undue hardship to the employer’s business.
The guidance identifies examples of reasonable accommodations that may be required under the LAD and explains the broad anti-discrimination protections the LAD affords for pregnant, postpartum, breastfeeding, and lactating employees.
The LAD expressly lists the minimum reasonable accommodations that employers must provide pregnant, postpartum, breastfeeding, and lactating employees. Employers are required to provide pregnant employees with bathroom breaks, hydration breaks, periodic rest, assistance with manual labor, job restructuring or modified work schedules, and temporary transfers to less strenuous or hazardous work.
For lactating employees, employers are required to provide reasonable break time each day and a suitable room or other location with privacy, other than a toilet stall, near the work area for the employee to express milk.
The guidance also provides dozens of additional examples of accommodations that may be required pursuant to the LAD. Those reasonable accommodations may include, time off or scheduling flexibility for health care appointments, workstation modifications to reduce pain and discomfort, modifications to uniforms or dress codes, modifications to eating and drinking policies, remote work, and adjustments to quotas or production standards to reflect milk expression breaks.
The guidance explains that the LAD requires employers to either grant accommodation requests without undue delay or, if the request is extremely expensive or difficult to accommodate, work with the employee to find alternative accommodations.
In addition, the guidance provides a non-exhaustive list of examples of medical conditions related to pregnancy, childbirth, and lactation that may entitle an employee to receive reasonable accommodations. These may include, but are not limited to, medical conditions experienced during pregnancy; pre-existing conditions exacerbated by pregnancy or childbirth; medical conditions that occur after a pregnancy; medical conditions related to possible pregnancy, such as those related to fertility; pregnancy loss, including miscarriage and stillbirth; and conditions related to lactation. Protections for pregnant, postpartum, breastfeeding, and lactating employees afforded under New Jersey law exist separate and apart from protections afforded under federal law. In some cases, the LAD may provide broader protection than is available under federal law.
The guidance issued today continues the Department of Law and Public Safety’s efforts to protect the rights of pregnant employees in New Jersey in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision overturning the federal constitutional right to an abortion.
What if I identify as lactating?
Sounds very Nobel, who can be against this ?
In reality, This is just an other Government enforced mandate.
They tend to be costly, cumbersome, and typically work against the very people they claim to want to help.
As Ronald Reagan famously stated; The scariest phrase in the English language is,
“We are from the Government, and we are here to help”.
There is a lot of useful information here, with some caveats.
For example, the requirements do differ based on how many employees a business has.
it’s time we had someone in the gov’t who thinks and cares about working parents and children of working parents.
It’s not the job of the Government to dictate how people should live. Government is supposed to work for all the people all the time. Not choose who to work for when and how. In what way will this help majority of New Jersey residents? It won’t. Thus it’s an overreach and is basically unconstitutional.; This is the kind of law that gets people talking about the need for another civil war. A war to take America back. Etc.
Not once is female, woman or any other gendered language used.
Just an observation