If you are a pregnant female employee in Florida and your employer has a workforce of 15 or more people, you have certain rights related to your pregnancy status when it comes to your work environment. Because your employer meets certain size guidelines, it must comply with the tenets of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act and Title I of the Americans With Disabilities Act, which set guidelines as to how to treat and handle working women with pregnancy-related conditions.
According to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, you have a right to expect fair treatment at work, regardless of if your condition involves a current pregnancy, a past pregnancy, a possible pregnancy or a condition relating to pregnancy. Furthermore, employers must handle and respond to pregnancy-related conditions in the same manner they would any other type of disability when it comes to duties, breaks and so on.
Under the requirements of the ADA, your employer must also be willing to make “reasonable accommodations” for you with regard to your pregnancy or pregnancy-related condition. What might “reasonable accommodations” include? Agreeing to make slight schedule modifications to compensate for, say, morning sickness is one example, and allowing a pregnant employee to work from home when doing so will not interfere with job duties is another. Giving you lighter-than-typical job duties for a period may also constitute a reasonable accommodation, among other examples. If your employer has 50 or more people working for it, it must also allow you to take up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave to birth or care for your child under the terms of the Family and Medical Leave Act.
This information about your rights as a pregnant woman in the workplace is educational and does not constitute legal advice.
