NEW YORK (AP) — A federal judge on Monday granted the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and employers in two southern states fleeting relief from complying with a federal law that would have required them to provide employees with leave and other job-related benefits if they had an abortion.
Judge David Joseph granted the injunction in two consolidated lawsuits, one brought by the attorneys general of Louisiana and Mississippi, the other by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, a Catholic university and two Catholic dioceses.
The lawsuits challenge regulations issued in April by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that state that abortion is among the pregnancy-related conditions covered by the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, which was passed in December 2022 and took effect last year.
The EEOC rules take effect on Tuesday.
Joseph, who was appointed judge by former President Donald Trump, barred the EEOC from enforcing the abortion provisions of its rules against the Catholic plaintiffs and employers in Louisiana and Mississippi for the duration of the trial.
His ruling came just days after a federal judge in Arkansas dismissed a similar lawsuit brought by 17 states, led by Arkansas and Tennessee. U.S. District Judge for the Eastern District of Arkansas DP Marshall Jr., who was appointed by former President Barack Obama, ruled that the states did not have standing to file the lawsuit.
“The district court applied a common sense interpretation to the plain language of the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act,” Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said in an emailed statement.
The Louisiana ruling was a partial victory for the attorneys general of Louisiana and Mississippi, who had sought a far broader injunction that would have blocked the EEOC’s rules from being implemented across the board. That request had alarmed some civil liberties and women’s rights groups, who warned that the EEOC’s rules were critical to the law’s successful implementation.
The American Civil Liberties Union and the National Women’s Law Center, along with more than 20 labor and women’s rights groups, filed an amicus curiae brief citing dozens of cases of pregnant workers whose employers continued to deny them special conditions, saying the EEOC rules provide clarity in resolving disputes.
“The court has left some pregnant workers in need of abortion services to fend for themselves,” said Gaylynn Burroughs, vice president of workplace equity and education at the NWLC.
Rachel Shanklin, national women’s entrepreneurship director at Small Business Majority, said even Monday’s constrained ruling will have a large impact because it will “make it harder for working women – at least temporarily – to access abortion care.”
“Our research consistently shows that female entrepreneurs said the ability to decide for themselves whether and when to start a family played a significant role in advancing their careers and launching their small business,” Shanklin said in a statement.
Dina Bakst, co-founder and president of the legal group A Better Balance, which led a decade-long campaign for the law, condemned the Louisiana ruling, saying it “disregarded decades of legal precedent” and classified abortion as a component of pregnancy-related illness.
However, she stressed that given the constrained scope of the injunction, it is critical that “pregnant and postpartum workers understand that this ruling does not mean that they will be deprived of their rights under the PWFA.”
The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act passed in December 2022 with broad, bipartisan support, following a decade-long campaign by women’s rights activists who celebrated it as a victory for low-income women who were routinely denied everything from time off for doctor’s appointments to the ability to sit or stand at work.
But many Republican lawmakers, including Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who co-sponsored the bill, were incensed when the EEOC said the law also covered abortion. Both Republican commissioners on the five-member EEOC voted against the rule.
The EEOC stated that including abortion in its regulations was consistent with its own decades-long interpretation of pregnancy-related anti-discrimination law and that this interpretation was supported by numerous court decisions.
The regulations also specified that the rules do not require an employer to provide health insurance for abortions, and that the most likely request for compensation is to take time off to undergo the procedure or recover from complications. The EEOC has stated that any situations in which a request for compensation may conflict with state law will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis.
In their complaint, the attorneys general stated that “the EEOC is forcing states like Louisiana and Mississippi to violate state law and effectively permit abortion.”
In Mississippi, most abortions are prohibited after 15 weeks of pregnancy. In Louisiana, there is a near-total ban on abortion, with exceptions when continuing the pregnancy would pose a significant risk of death or disability to the patient and when the fetus has a fatal abnormality.
In its lawsuit, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said it publicly supported the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act because lawmakers emphasized its noncontroversial nature, with some explicitly stating that no permission was required for voluntary abortions.
Laura Wolk Slavis, a lawyer representing the Catholic groups, said, “The EEOC hijacked bipartisan protections for expectant mothers and their babies by enforcing a national abortion rule.” She said the ruling was a “crucial step” in bringing the law “back to its purpose.”
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