The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission plans to revise regulations implementing the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, according to a filing to the Office of Management and Budget. The agency expects to take up the changes in November, but has not specified what the revised rules will contain.
An abstract of the proposal says the EEOC intends to reconsider its interpretation of “pregnancy, childbirth or related medical conditions.” The existing regulations require covered employers to provide reasonable accommodations for a qualified worker’s known limitations related to, affected by or arising from pregnancy, childbirth or related medical conditions, unless doing so would cause undue hardship.
Chair Andrea Lucas has previously criticized the scope of the current interpretation. In comments made when the regulations were finalized in 2024, she argued that they extended accommodation requirements beyond pregnancy and childbirth to conditions connected to female reproductive biology. Lucas cited infertility, menstruation, hormone issues and menopause as possible areas the rules could cover.
The planned revision could also affect the regulations’ treatment of abortion, a contentious issue in the rulemaking. The EEOC said in 2024 that more than half of the roughly 100,000 comments it received on the proposed rule called for abortion to be excluded from the definition of “related medical conditions.” In May 2025, a judge vacated the portion requiring accommodations for elective abortions, while noting that the decision did not affect abortions arising from treatment of an underlying pregnancy-related medical condition.
An EEOC spokesperson declined to comment on deliberations or speculate about future regulatory action, while emphasizing the agency’s commitment to pregnant workers. The spokesperson said the agency had taken more than 40 public enforcement actions involving pregnancy-related discrimination since the start of the second Trump administration, including 24 lawsuits, and had obtained $1.6 million in relief for victims.
The proposal will be published in the Federal Register, after which the public will have an opportunity to comment. The EEOC filing indicates that the comment period is expected to close sometime in January.
Sources: HR Dive.