This story was originally published by The 19th.
More than 8,000 Catholic employers across the country will not be required to provide accommodations for workers needing abortion or fertility care following a ruling in North Dakota.
The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act took effect in June 2023, granting workers — many of them low-wage women — protections if they needed time off from work for pregnancy-related conditions. Earlier this year, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which enforces the law, released rules that broadly defined pregnancy-related conditions to include anything from morning sickness to an abortion or fertility care. Under the rules, workers could request time off to get an abortion or for an IVF procedure, for example, and employers must work in good faith to provide the accommodation.
But the Catholic Benefits Association and the Diocese of Bismarck sued the EEOC this summer, arguing that a broad interpretation of the law that included abortion and fertility protections would be violating Catholic employers’ religious freedom.
The EEOC, the complaint said, “hijacked this statute and demanded that Catholic and other employers affirmatively accommodate abortion and immoral fertility treatments.”
The EEOC rules don’t require employers to pay for the care, just to provide time off to allow workers to seek it.
“This rulemaking does not require abortions or affect the availability of abortion; it simply ensures that employees who choose to have (or not to have) an abortion are able to continue participating in the workforce, by seeking reasonable accommodations from covered employers, as needed and absent undue hardship,” the EEOC rules states. The rules also extend to time off for prenatal appointments or accommodations like time to sit, rest, drink, eat or use the bathroom, protections that are not impacted by the injunction.
U.S. District Judge Daniel Traynor sided with the Catholic Benefits Association and the Diocese of Bismarck this week, issuing a preliminary injunction and signaling they were likely to win their case. The injunction bars the EEOC from forcing the association and........