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Diving brief:

• Lago Mar Beach Resort & Club in Fort Lauderdale, Florida agreed to pay $100,000 to resolve allegations by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that it failed to accommodate and fired an employee after she requested leave following a stillbirth, the EEOC announced on October 11.
• The employee worked as a line cook, according to the complaint In EEOC v. Lago Mar Properties, Inc. During her fifth month of pregnancy, she was hospitalized for complications and suffered a stillbirth, according to the complaint. She informed her supervisors and submitted a letter from her doctor stating that she would need approximately six weeks to recover and grieve, according to the lawsuit.
• The day after the employee submitted her letter, she received notice of her termination, according to the lawsuit. The EEOC sued Lago Mar for allegedly violating the Pregnant Workers’ Fairness Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act. Less than three years judgment of consentthe station agreed to review its PWFA/ADA policies, provide staff training, and report every six months to the EEOC for the duration of the consent decree.

Dive overview:

The EEOC commended Lago Mar “for implementing progressive workplace measures to prevent discrimination against pregnant and disabled employees and ensuring that their policies and procedures align with these legal obligations,” the agency said in the release.

Lago Mar did not respond to a request for comment before press time.

The PWFA is a accommodation statusthe EEOC clarified in a guide. It requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations to a qualified employee’s or applicant’s known limitations “related to pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions,” unless the accommodation would result in excessive difficulties for the employer.

Similar to the ADA, a qualified employee or applicant is generally one who can perform the essential functions of the position with or without reasonable accommodation, the guide explains.

Additionally, as with the ADA, employers cannot retaliate against an employee or applicant for requesting or using a reasonable accommodation, the EEOC emphasizes.

However, unlike the ADA, under the PWFA, an employee’s or applicant’s pregnancy-related condition need not be serious. Instead, even those who have healthy and normal pregnancies are entitled to reasonable accommodation, the lawyers noted.

The Lago Mar case once again puts employers on notice that the EEOC is actively enforcing the law. This is the fifth time the EEOC has sued an employer for violations of the PWFA since the law took effect in 2023, the announcement said.

The case has three takeaways: First, it shows that the EEOC considers stillbirth to be a “related medical condition.” Other related conditions listed in the EEOC guidelines include cesarean sections, miscarriage, postpartum depression, edema, placenta previa, and lactation.

Second, the case reminds employers that, as with the ADA, the EEOC expects them to reach a reasonable accommodation through an interactive process with the employee. Here, Lago Mar allegedly did not “engage (the employee) in any interactive process regarding her request for leave as an accommodation prior to terminating her employment,” the complaint states.

Third, the case highlights how the PWFA and the ADA can overlap.

In other words, although pregnancy itself is not a disability, a pregnant employee may suffer from a pregnancy-related illness that is considered a disability under the ADA, the EEOC explains. Examples include: pelvic inflammation causing severe pain and difficulty walking, pregnancy-related anemia, gestational diabetes, and preeclampsia, according to the guidelines.

In the Lago Mar case, consistent with the ADA’s definition of disability, the EEOC alleged that the employee was significantly impaired in the major life activities of cooking, driving, concentrating, thinking, s “sit, stand, take care of herself and look after her children” due to the mental and physical trauma of losing her pregnancy at five months, and she suffered from depression.

According to the consent decree, the $100,000 Lago Mar will pay the employee includes $92,080 in compensatory damages and $7,920 in back pay.