Federal Court Vacates Portion of PWFA Final Rule Requiring Accommodation for Elective Abortions
On May 21, 2025, Judge David C. Joseph of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana issued a ruling vacating the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s final rule under the 2022 Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA), 1 to the extent that the final rule includes elective abortion as a condition for which employers are required to make accommodations. The court vacated this portion of the final rule, finding that it exceeded the EEOC’s statutory authority. The EEOC issued the final rule in April 2024 , establishing a broad interpretation of “pregnancy, childbirth or related medical conditions” that permitted individuals to seek accommodation in connection with choosing or not choosing to have an abortion. This approach had been announced in August 2023, when the EEOC published its Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM). In the final rule, the EEOC noted that it had first treated abortion as a “related medical condit...