The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission plans to revise its regulations implementing the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act sometime in November, the agency quietly signaled in a filing to the executive branch’s Office of Management and Budget.
According to an abstract describing the proposed changes, the agency plans to target regulations that require covered entities to provide reasonable accommodations to a qualified worker’s known limitations related to, affected by or arising out of pregnancy, childbirth or related medical conditions, unless the accommodation will cause an undue hardship. Specifically, EEOC said it intends to revise its interpretation of the words “pregnancy, childbirth or related medical conditions.”
While the agency has not specified what changes it will make, EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas forecasted the change in the early days of the second Trump administration, while still serving as acting chair. In stating her position at that time, Lucas referenced a statement she’d written when the agency finalized its regulations in April 2024.
“At a high level, the rule fundamentally errs in conflating pregnancy and childbirth accommodation with accommodation of the female sex, that is, female biology and reproduction,” Lucas wrote at that time. “The Commission extends the new accommodation requirements to reach virtually every condition, circumstance, or procedure that relates to any aspect of the female reproductive system.”
Going into more depth, the rule “opens the door to requiring accommodations potentially extending to a myriad of conditions ranging from infertility to menstruation to hormone issues to menopause,” Lucas wrote.
Perhaps surprisingly, Lucas’ response letter did not touch specifically on abortion protections the commission included, arguably the most controversial aspect of the Biden-era PWFA regulations. More than half of the 100,000 comments to EEOC about the proposed rule at that time asked the agency to exclude abortion from its definition of “related medical conditions,” the agency said in 2024.
In May 2025, a judge vacated the portion of the rule requiring accommodation for elective abortions in a decision consolidating several challenges. He noted that abortions stemming from underlying treatment of a medical condition related to pregnancy were not affected by the order, however.
An EEOC spokesperson said the agency does not comment on potential rulemaking deliberations or speculate about future regulatory actions but emphasized the agency’s and Chair Lucas’ commitment to pregnant workers.
“Since the start of the second Trump Administration, the agency has taken more than 40 public enforcement actions involving pregnancy-related discrimination, including lawsuits, subpoena enforcement actions, and public pre-litigation settlements under the PWFA, Pregnancy Discrimination Act, and Americans with Disabilities Act,” the spokesperson said. They added that the agency had filed 24 lawsuits and obtained $1.6 million in relief for victims of pregnancy discrimination.
After the proposed rule is published in the Federal Register, the public will have an opportunity to comment. EEOC’s filing indicated it expects the comment period to end sometime in January.
