Is It Legal To Fire Someone For Pumping Breast Milk In The Office?

1:24 pm, February 10th | by Hillary Reinsberg

Not anymore. But that unfortunately doesn’t help Donnicia Venters’ case.

Venters gave birth in 2008, while she was working at a Texas company called Houston Funding. After giving birth and taking some maternity leave, Venters returned to work, where she pumped breast milk. She was fired shortly afterwards.

She took the case to court, but a judge dismissed wrongful termination suit this week, saying that since she was no longer pregnant, her company didn’t have to provide any special conditions for her at the point when she was breast-feeding. That’s pretty messed up, no? The law actually agrees, and passed a law almost two years ago that says companies need to be accommodating to new mothers who need time to nurse their children and pump breast milk in the office. But since Venters’ case happened just over a year before the legislation was signed, the judge said her company wasn’t in the wrong.

By the way, it’s not as if Venters just ripped her shirt off screaming and pumped her bare breasts on the CEO’s desk. She actually asked if she could get some private space to pump breast milk privately, at which point she was told, “You’re fired.”

Messed up indeed.

[Reuters / Jezebel]

TAGS: donnicia venters | fired during maternity leave | maternity leave | woman pumping breast milk

http://twitter.com/Staciisa_bitch Staci Chase

You shouldn’t be fired for that! That’s just inexcusable.
http://profiles.google.com/riot5000 Riot Fivethousand

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Idisagree

Wow, that wasn’t condescending at all.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Geoff-Pace/1447673162 Geoff Pace

The Western culture is schizophrenic in its approach to sexuality and anything to do with the human body. We can have scantily clad nymphos pasted all over our magazines at grocery check out points and yet raise “moral outrage” over the very same mammary glands being used for the express purpose of nourishing our offspring. We have grade school teachers teaching sexual positions to our pre-schoolers in the East-Coast liberal school districts and how Heather has two Mommies and talk openly of oral sex and homosexual marriages and yet this still brings out the “moralists” in all their brilliant hues of indignation. It is a bepuzzlement, indeed.
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