Washington Healthy Starts Act

Employees in Washington are granted several protections based upon protected status. One such status is pregnancy. The Washington Healthy Starts Act, states that is “an unfair practice” for an employer to “fail or refuse to make reasonable accommodation for an employee for pregnancy[.]” The act even specifies that certain considerations are automatically included in the definition of “reasonable accommodation” of pregnancy. Those include:

• Providing more frequent, longer, or flexible restroom breaks;

• Modifying a no food or drink policy;

• Job restructuring, part-time or modified work schedules, reassignment to a vacant position, or acquiring or modifying equipment, devices, or an employee's work station;

• Providing seating or allowing the employee to sit more frequently if her job requires her to stand;

• Providing for a temporary transfer to a less strenuous or less hazardous position;

• Providing assistance with manual labor and limits on lifting;

• Scheduling flexibility for prenatal visits; and

• Providing reasonable break time for an employee to express breast milk for two years after the child's birth each time the employee has need to express the milk and providing a private location, other than a bathroom, if such a location exists at the place of business or worksite, which may be used by the employee to express breast milk. If the business location does not have a space for the employee to express milk, the employer shall work with the employee to identify a convenient location and work schedule to accommodate their needs.

Additionally, the HSA also provides a catchall that an employer must give reasonable consideration to any further accommodation requests from a pregnant employee. Accordingly, the Health Stats Act mandates that those articulated accommodations are only the minimum that an employer must provide