Latest news with #PregnantWorkerFairnessAct
CBS News
17-04-2025
- Politics
- CBS News
Catholic employers don't have to accommodate workers' abortions and fertility treatments, judge rules
Bismarck, N.D. — More than 9,000 Catholic employers don't need to abide by federal regulations protecting workers who seek abortions and fertility treatments under a ruling issued this week by a federal judge in North Dakota. Last year, the Catholic Benefits Association and the Bismarck Diocese sued the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, saying it issued regulations and guidelines that "ran roughshod" over their religious rights. U.S. District Judge Daniel Traynor later granted a preliminary injunction to temporarily block the commission's final rule for the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act and enforcement guidance for harassment protections for workers that includes gender identity under sex-based discrimination. On Tuesday, Traynor issued a permanent block on the regulations, finding the association and the diocese succeeded on the merits of their claim that the Pregnant Worker Fairness Act violated a federal law protecting religious freedom. The judge said the case's facts and evidence haven't changed since the initial block he issued last year. Last year, he wrote: "It is a precarious time for people of religious faith in America. It has been described as a post-Christian age. One indication of this dire assessment may be the repeated illegal and unconstitutional administrative actions against one of the founding principles of our country, the free exercise of religion." The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act took effect in 2023. The law requires covered employers make reasonable accommodations for workers' pregnancy or childbirth-related needs. In 2024, the EEOC issued the rule implementing the law and the harassment enforcement guidance. In earlier court papers, the association and the diocese said, "The combined effect of EEOC's pronouncements is that they require CBA Members, contrary to their Catholic faith, to accommodate their employees' abortions and immoral fertility treatments, to use false pronouns when requested by transitioning employees, to abstain from expressing Catholic teaching regarding sexual issues, and to give employees of one sex access to private spaces reserved to those of the other sex." The EEOC previously asked the judge to deny a permanent injunction and said the other side can't back up its claims. Attorney Martin Nussbaum said his clients are "very thankful to the federal judiciary for vindicating religious freedom rights" in the case and previous ones involving the association. "One of the things that we've seen is an emerging practice on behalf of some of the federal administrations - we also see this in certain states - a desire not only to mandate immoral benefits but to impose speech codes that would be contrary to Catholic values," such as the commission's harassment guidance, Nussbaum said. "But the speech codes go beyond pronouns to even speaking about what Catholic teaching is, and we're just grateful to this court for protecting the freedom of speech of Catholic organizations as well." The Associated Press emailed the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission seeking comment. The Catholic Benefits Association serves more than 9,000 Catholic employers and has about 164,000 employees enrolled in member health plans, according to its website.
Yahoo
16-04-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Judge blocks worker protections for abortion and fertility care for Catholic employers
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — More than 9,000 Catholic employers do not need to abide by federal regulations protecting workers who seek abortions and fertility treatments under a ruling issued this week by a federal judge in North Dakota. Last year, the Catholic Benefits Association and the Bismarck Diocese sued the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, saying it issued regulations and guidelines that 'ran roughshod' over their religious rights. U.S. District Judge Daniel Traynor later granted a preliminary injunction to temporarily block the commission's final rule for the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act and enforcement guidance for harassment protections for workers that includes gender identity under sex-based discrimination. On Tuesday, Traynor issued a permanent block on the regulations, finding the association and the diocese succeeded on the merits of their claim that the Pregnant Worker Fairness Act violated a federal law protecting religious freedom. The judge said the case's facts and evidence have not changed since the initial block he issued last year. Last year, he wrote: 'It is a precarious time for people of religious faith in America. It has been described as a post-Christian age. One indication of this dire assessment may be the repeated illegal and unconstitutional administrative actions against one of the founding principles of our country, the free exercise of religion.' The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act took effect in 2023. The law requires covered employers make reasonable accommodations for workers' pregnancy or childbirth-related needs. In 2024, the EEOC issued the rule implementing the law and the harassment enforcement guidance. In earlier court papers, the association and the diocese said, 'The combined effect of EEOC's pronouncements is that they require CBA Members, contrary to their Catholic faith, to accommodate their employees' abortions and immoral fertility treatments, to use false pronouns when requested by transitioning employees, to abstain from expressing Catholic teaching regarding sexual issues, and to give employees of one sex access to private spaces reserved to those of the other sex.' The EEOC previously asked the judge to deny a permanent injunction and said the other side can't back up its claims. Attorney Martin Nussbaum said his clients are 'very thankful to the federal judiciary for vindicating religious freedom rights' in the case and previous ones involving the association. 'One of the things that we've seen is an emerging practice on behalf of some of the federal administrations — we also see this in certain states — a desire not only to mandate immoral benefits but to impose speech codes that would be contrary to Catholic values,' such as the commission's harassment guidance, Nussbaum said. 'But the speech codes go beyond pronouns to even speaking about what Catholic teaching is, and we're just grateful to this court for protecting the freedom of speech of Catholic organizations as well.' The Associated Press emailed the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for comment. The Catholic Benefits Association serves more than 9,000 Catholic employers and has about 164,000 employees enrolled in member health plans, according to its website.
Associated Press
16-04-2025
- Health
- Associated Press
Judge blocks worker protections for abortion and fertility care for Catholic employers
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — More than 9,000 Catholic employers do not need to abide by federal regulations protecting workers who seek abortions and fertility treatments under a ruling issued this week by a federal judge in North Dakota. Last year, the Catholic Benefits Association and the Bismarck Diocese sued the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, saying it issued regulations and guidelines that 'ran roughshod' over their religious rights. U.S. District Judge Daniel Traynor later granted a preliminary injunction to temporarily block the commission's final rule for the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act and enforcement guidance for harassment protections for workers that includes gender identity under sex-based discrimination. On Tuesday, Traynor issued a permanent block on the regulations, finding the association and the diocese succeeded on the merits of their claim that the Pregnant Worker Fairness Act violated a federal law protecting religious freedom. The judge said the case's facts and evidence have not changed since the initial block he issued last year. Last year, he wrote: 'It is a precarious time for people of religious faith in America. It has been described as a post-Christian age. One indication of this dire assessment may be the repeated illegal and unconstitutional administrative actions against one of the founding principles of our country, the free exercise of religion.' The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act took effect in 2023. The law requires covered employers make reasonable accommodations for workers' pregnancy or childbirth-related needs. In 2024, the EEOC issued the rule implementing the law and the harassment enforcement guidance. In earlier court papers, the association and the diocese said, 'The combined effect of EEOC's pronouncements is that they require CBA Members, contrary to their Catholic faith, to accommodate their employees' abortions and immoral fertility treatments, to use false pronouns when requested by transitioning employees, to abstain from expressing Catholic teaching regarding sexual issues, and to give employees of one sex access to private spaces reserved to those of the other sex.' The EEOC previously asked the judge to deny a permanent injunction and said the other side can't back up its claims. Attorney Martin Nussbaum said his clients are 'very thankful to the federal judiciary for vindicating religious freedom rights' in the case and previous ones involving the association. 'One of the things that we've seen is an emerging practice on behalf of some of the federal administrations — we also see this in certain states — a desire not only to mandate immoral benefits but to impose speech codes that would be contrary to Catholic values,' such as the commission's harassment guidance, Nussbaum said. 'But the speech codes go beyond pronouns to even speaking about what Catholic teaching is, and we're just grateful to this court for protecting the freedom of speech of Catholic organizations as well.' The Associated Press emailed the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for comment. The Catholic Benefits Association serves more than 9,000 Catholic employers and has about 164,000 employees enrolled in member health plans, according to its website.
Yahoo
26-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Anti-abortion groups claim they don't want to punish women. New lawsuits say otherwise.
The antiabortion movement is grappling with an internal divide about whether women should be punished for abortion, as a growing number of state legislatures consider personhood bills authorizing the punishment of abortion seekers. But an ongoing struggle to deny accommodations for pregnant workers shows the two sides in this civil war might not be so far apart. Both groups seem to agree employers should be allowed to penalize workers who get abortions. Well before the Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade, the nation's most powerful antiabortion groups denounced the idea of punishing women for abortion. When then-candidate Donald Trump said in 2016 that women deserved 'some form of punishment' for abortion, leading antiabortion activists lambasted him. Movement leaders stressed that prosecutors had rarely targeted women in the years before Roe and pledged that nothing would change when abortion was once again a crime. The bans implemented after the Dobbs ruling, such as the trigger laws that went into effect immediately after Roe's demise, often contained exemptions for pregnant patients. But in recent years, the most powerful antiabortion groups have faced a challenge from a new group of self-proclaimed abolitionists, many of them with roots in Southern evangelical churches. The abolitionists agree that a fetus is a person whose rights begin at fertilization, and that the only principled way to enforce those rights is to punish those who harmed the fetus. Why, the abolitionists ask, is it acceptable to exempt women from criminal abortion laws when statutes punished women for any other homicide? Larger antiabortion groups understood, of course, that punishing abortion seekers was bad politics. Some members of the bigger groups opposed punishing women as a matter of principle. And they had long argued that women were the 'second victims' of abortion, manipulated by a profit-driven industry to make decisions they would regret. But apparently, when working women have abortions, the calculus changes. Ongoing lawsuits by multiple conservative-run states show that both factions seem to favor allowing employers to penalize women who take time off to seek an abortion or deal with related medical complications. The dispute turns on the interpretation of the Pregnant Worker Fairness Act, a law passed in 2022 with bipartisan support to deal with rampant discrimination against pregnant workers. Previous laws had prohibited employers from singling out pregnant employees for especially despicable treatment, but hadn't actually obligated employers to accommodate pregnancy-related complications. The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act sought to change that. Last year, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issued a rule concluding that the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act also required employers to accommodate abortion-related leaves. But red states had no intention of handing over their right to discipline workers who needed accommodation related to abortion. In one lawsuit, Louisiana and Mississippi convinced a district court to block enforcement of the rule. Seventeen conservative states also filed suit in Arkansas, arguing that the EEOC rule would do them real harm by undermining their symbolic opposition to abortion, limiting their ability to criminalize abortion, and costing them money when state employees had abortion-related complications. An Arkansas district court judge refused the states' request to block the Biden rule while the litigation continues, finding that the states didn't have standing. This week, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed. While the district court reasoned that the conservative states could only speculate about future injuries, the 8th Circuit held that that speculation was enough: The states would have compliance costs as employers if their workers asked for abortion-related leaves and let them pursue their case. Now, the suit will go forward, as abortion opponents wait on President Donald Trump to fill empty seats on the EEOC (Trump took the unprecedented step of firing two of the three Democratic commissioners, a move that may be challenged in court). The fight over the scope of the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act will matter for those who terminate their pregnancies, or those whose miscarriages or stillbirths are mistaken for abortion. But the fight over pregnancy accommodations also complicates the story abortion opponents tell about punishing women. In theory, if women are victims, conservative states focus on protecting them from unscrupulous health-care providers — or others that they believe 'aid or abet' women. Disciplining or dismissing workers who take time off for abortion — or abortion complications — seems to be precisely the kind of punitive step that red states have sworn off. These lawmakers purport to protect women from the adverse consequences of abortion, but if an employee actually experiences complications, the state is fiercely defending the right not to accommodate her, or even to discipline or terminate her. One way or another, it seems inevitable that employers will regain the power to fire workers who take time off to have an abortion, or who experience complications after terminating a pregnancy. The Trump EEOC will almost certainly roll back the Biden rule, if states like Texas don't manage to convince a court to invalidate the EEOC rule first. Either way, the message is clear: Texas may not want to put women in prison for having abortions, but firing them could be another thing entirely. This article was originally published on
