Ever since the Pregnancy Discrimination Act was passed in 1978, it’s been illegal to discriminate against pregnant women in the workplace. Problem is, employers aren’t totally getting it, which is why the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission recently issued new guidelines on this issue — the first time it’s done so in 30 years. We say it’s about time! But we also understand why it hasn’t totally sunk in, since legalese isn’t the easiest language to understand. So we asked legal experts to spell out what these new guidelines really mean.
Here’s a cheat sheet: