The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is separately suing a shipping company’s Matteson location and an assisted living company’s Blue Island location for discriminating against pregnant workers, the federal agency announced Tuesday.
R&L Carriers’ Matteson location and Prairie Green at Fay’s Point assisted living are accused of violating the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, which requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations for pregnancy and childbirth related conditions, unless it causes an undue hardship for the business.
The EEOC said in its news release that it filed the lawsuits after first trying to reach a settlement with both companies.
According to the EEOC’s filed complaint, the North American freight shipping company’s 20710 South Cox Ave., Matteson location discriminated against truck driver Laura Teneza by forcing her to take leave rather than work during her pregnancy.
Teneza provided her supervisor, Daniel Bustos, with a doctor’s note informing him that she was pregnant in October 2023. The note indicated Teneza had a 20-pound lifting restriction and could not work more than 40 hours per week while pregnant. On the following day, Bustos allegedly told Teneza that she was being “put out of service because she was a liability to the company,” according to the complaint.
Prairie Green at Fay’s Point, at 1546 West Water St., Blue Island, similarly put Arinnie Young on involuntary leave after learning she was pregnant, according to the EEOC complaint in that case.
Young, a certified nursing assistant, allegedly informed the facility’s director of nursing that she was pregnant with a 20-pound lifting restriction and provided a doctor’s note in April 2023. At first, the director of nursing informally accommodated the lifting restriction by allowing her to switch assisted living residents with another CNA on duty if the resident needed to be lifted, according to the complaint.
Young continued to work her overnight shift at the facility until August 2023, when Prairie Green at Fay’s Point Executive Director Belinda Mays-Howard learned of her pregnancy, the complaint said.
Mays-Howard allegedly told Young that she was not allowed to work until she submitted a completed accommodation request form and the request was approved. The accommodation submitted several days later was ultimately denied, with Mays-Howard and office manager Karen Horton telling Young her only option was to take unpaid leave for the remainder of her pregnancy, according to the complaint.
Young did not accept the offer of unpaid leave and was terminated later that month “because she requested a reasonable accommodation and defendant was unable to provide any accommodation that would comply with her lifting restriction,” the complaint said.
In the cases of both Prairie Green at Fay’s Point and R&L Carriers, “accommodating the restriction would have allowed the employees to continue to work, but their employers refused,” the EEOC said in its news release. The EEOC said it seeks monetary damages for both Teneza and Young and an injunction to prevent the employers from similar conduct in the future.
Neither Prairie Green at Fay’s Point nor R&L Carriers immediately responded to requests for comment. R&L Carriers is based in Wilmington, Ohio, and Prairie Green at Fay’s Point’s parent company, Senior Lifestyle, is based in Chicago.
Victor Chen, an EEOC spokesperson, said the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act “was designed to prevent what happened here: pregnant workers being pushed out of the workforce.”
“Filing these cases on the same day underscores the wide range of jobs held by pregnant workers and highlights this relatively new federal law designed to protect them,” Chen said.