Federal Court Vacates Portion of PWFA Final Rule Requiring Accommodation for Elective Abortions

On May 21, 2025, Judge David C. Joseph of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana issued a ruling vacating the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s final rule under the 2022 Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA),¹ to the extent that the final rule includes elective abortion as a condition for which employers are required to make accommodations. The court vacated this portion of the final rule, finding that it exceeded the EEOC’s statutory authority. 

The EEOC issued the final rule in April 2024, establishing a broad interpretation of “pregnancy, childbirth or related medical conditions” that permitted individuals to seek accommodation in connection with choosing or not choosing to have an abortion. This approach had been announced in August 2023, when the EEOC published its Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM). In the final rule, the EEOC noted that it had first treated abortion as a “related medical condition” in 1972, when it issued non-discrimination guidance with respect to temporary disabilities related to “pregnancy, miscarriage, abortion, childbirth and recovery therefrom,”² and that its guidance under Title VII had provided for time off related to abortion since 1978. 

The final rule acknowledged the 54,000 comments that the EEOC received concerning abortion following its issuance of the NPRM. The EEOC noted, however, that the PWFA is a “workplace anti-discrimination law” that neither requires any employer or taxpayer to support abortion nor compels any health care provider to perform one. Rather, the EEOC stated, “the type of accommodation that most likely will be sought under the PWFA regarding an abortion is time off to attend a medical appointment or for recovery,” and also that such time off would generally be unpaid unless an employer’s policies or other applicable law provided differently. The EEOC reasoned that such a request should be considered within the PWFA’s underlying purpose: To ensure that employers provide reasonable accommodations for known limitations stemming from pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions—unless the employer can clearly demonstrate that doing so would impose an undue hardship on the operation of its business. 

Nonetheless, less than a month after the final rule issued, the states of Mississippi and Louisiana launched a legal challenge, asserting that the rule violated both the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) and the U.S. Constitution.³ Their lawsuit sought a declaratory judgment affirming that neither state is obligated to accommodate employees’ elective abortions, which are unlawful under each state’s respective laws. Simultaneously, four Roman Catholic-affiliated organizations filed suit, which was consolidated with the states’ case in June 2024.⁴ In prior rulings, Judge Joseph had issued a preliminary injunction prohibiting the EEOC from initiating any investigation into claims of failure to accommodate an elective abortion or issuing any private plaintiff a Notice of Right to Sue on such claims.

In his May 21 ruling, Judge Joseph concluded that the final rule’s abortion-related guidance “clearly and unequivocally” exceeds the EEOC’s authority, reasoning that the PWFA statute does not refer at all to abortion, and that elective abortion therefore was not intended to fall within the PWFA’s definition of covered pregnancy-related “medical conditions.” The court’s order vacates all portions of the PWFA final rule that would require employers to accommodate individuals in connection with elective abortions. In making this determination, the court highlighted the timing of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Org., 597 U.S. 215 (2022), noting that the PWFA was enacted six months after the Supreme Court’s decision, and therefore determining that Congress was “well aware” of that decision’s impact on the legality and availability of elective abortion. The court declined at this stage to issue a final ruling on the Catholic organizations’ separate argument that the final rule overly limited available religious exemptions under Title VII and the PWFA by not including a blanket exemption for religious employers.

What’s Next?

Based on this ruling, the EEOC is directed to remove all provisions in the final rule that require employers to consider accommodations related to employees’ elective abortions. 

As a practical matter, most employers have not seen many, if any, abortion-related accommodation requests. Indeed, in issuing the final rule, the EEOC itself noted, “very few employers have actually faced a situation where an employee is expressly requesting leave for an abortion and the employer declines to grant the leave on religious or moral grounds.” 

Further, as we have previously advised, the PWFA and the final rule sharply limit employers’ ability to inquire into or seek medical documentation concerning the specific basis of an applicant’s or employee’s request for an accommodation under the PWFA. Specifically, in the final rule, the EEOC limits an employer to requesting only “reasonable documentation,” which is: (1) is the minimum sufficient to confirm that there is a physical or mental condition underlying the individual’s limitation; (2) confirms that the condition is related to, affected by, or arises out of “pregnancy, childbirth or related medical conditions”; and (3) states that the requested change or adjustment to the individual’s job or application process is needed due to the limitation. The Interpretive Guidance permits employers to ask for the expected duration of the requested modification, but the final rule notes that requests for more information than what is permitted may violate the PWFA’s prohibition on retaliation. This ruling does not alter the final rule’s limitations — or similar limitations under state and local time off laws — on an employer’s ability to inquire into the nature of an individual’s accommodation request. As such, except in those instances where an individual states that abortion is the basis for a requested accommodation, employers may have few occasions to change their existing PWFA processes.