AUGUST 2025 | 27 THE OKLAHOMA BAR JOURNAL Statements or opinions expressed in the Oklahoma Bar Journal are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Oklahoma Bar Association, its officers, Board of Governors, Board of Editors or staff. A HISTORY OF PREGNANCY-BASED LEGAL PROTECTIONS FOR THE WORKPLACE The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA) became law on June 27, 2023.1 While many thought the protections it mandated were already in place, it is not a stretch to say the PWFA was over 100 years in the making. In 1908, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a 14th Amendment challenge in Muller v. Oregon to a state law prohibiting women from working over 10 hours a day.2 The court reasoned that “healthy mothers are essential to vigorous offspring,” and “the physical well-being of a woman” is “an object of public interest and care.”3 The Oregon law and its various corollaries in other states were set aside by the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited discrimination “because of sex.” The Supreme Court first recognized sex-based discrimination in 19714 when it struck down a corporate policy that prohibited hiring mothers of preschool-age children because they were “unreliable,” while still hiring their father counterparts. In 1974, the court struck down a school policy forcing female teachers to go on maternity leave at the beginning of the fifth month of pregnancy.5 The road to equal protection for working mothers continued along a nonlinear trajectory, as mothers faced discrimination in their employment benefits through exclusion from health insurance plans and seniority accrual due to pregnancy. In the 1974 case of Geduldig v. Aiello, the Supreme Court upheld a California workers’ compensation law (for nonwork injuries) that permitted the denial of insurance benefits for work loss resulting from a normal pregnancy.6 The court reasoned that excluding pregnancy from the list of compensable disabilities was not sex-based discrimination and did not violate the 14th Amendment. The Supreme Court expanded this approach two years later in Gilbert v. General Electric Co. when it held that a private employer could explicitly exclude pregnancy from its disability benefits plan.7 The court found that these types of plans did not violate Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, as these policies did not show discrimination against women but just excluded pregnancy – a “voluntary” condition “confined to women” – while still insuring risks such as vasectomies and circumcisions.8 In a swift reaction to the Gilbert ruling, Congress introduced and passed the 1978 Pregnancy
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTk3MQ==