In today’s economy, women work as hard or harder than men. Even still, priority number one for many working women is having a family. Luckily, the US and California legislature’s have enacted laws that protect women who choose to have children and work. The law requires most employers to grant CA women maternity leave. Sadly, employers sometimes disregard the law and terminate the female soon after they find out she’s pregnant. If this has happened to you, you need to hire a maternity leave lawyer.
Maternity Leave Lawyers Know CA’s Employment Laws
A maternity leave lawyer is an employment lawyer who know’s a lot about California’s leave of absence laws that apply to maternity leave. These include the California Family Rights Act (CFRA) and the Pregnancy Discrimination Leave (PDL) laws. They are also very familiar with the federal laws on point, the Family Medical Rights Act (FMLA). There are many more laws that apply.
In a nutshell, a maternity leave attorney will be able to review your situation and let you know whether or not your employer has violated the law. If you need a reasonable accommodation because your doctor put you on bedrest, and your employer refused to provide you with accommodation, you might have a case. If you were fired shortly after you told your boss that you were pregnant, then you might have a case.
Typical Violations of the Pregnancy Discrimination Laws
Is it rare in today’s world when an employer blatantly fires an employee because she is pregnant. Discrimination is far more subtle in today’s world. Here are a few typical pregnancy discrimination scenarios that we see frequently:
- The employee finds out that she is pregnant and informs her boss a few months into the pregnancy. But then complications arise, and the employee is put on bedrest or her doctor instructs her to sit for 95% of the day. When the employee requests these accommodations, the employee is either fired, or gets a bad performance review and then is fired. Often, the employer will claim that the termination is for “tardiness” or some other made-up reason.
- The employee is pregnant and goes on maternity leave. Shortly after the employee returns, she is fired for performance related issues that allegedly occurred when she was pregnant. We often find that these bogus reasons are related to the days she left for prenatal visits or are correlated with her transition in preparing for her maternity leave.
- The employee tells the employer that she is pregnant and is suddenly fired for things that she allegedly did wrong before she told the employer that she was pregnant. If the lawyer can prove that these are not genuine reasons for her termination, the employer could be in a lot of legal trouble.
There are many more variations, but we see these all the time. But at the end of the day, whether or not you have a good case is determined on a case by case basis. If you want to know more, give our employment law firm a call. We always offer free consultations.