Two statutes, two different duties. The PDA is an equal-treatment rule inside Title VII. The PWFA is an accommodation statute. Mixing the duties is the most common confusion on this pair.
The PDA
Added by Pub. L. 95-555 effective October 31, 1978, section 42 U.S.C. 2000e(k) defines "because of sex" to include because of pregnancy, childbirth or related medical conditions, and requires that affected women be treated the same as others similar in their ability or inability to work.
That equal-treatment rule runs to all employment-related purposes, expressly including receipt of benefits under fringe benefit programs. So excluding pregnancy-related conditions from short-term disability while covering other temporary medical conditions is unlawful on its own terms. Offering unpaid leave instead is not an accepted substitute, and fringe benefit design is not outside Title VII's definition of sex.
The PDA does not require accommodation, does not bar forced leave, and does not make pregnancy a disability under the ADA. Those are PWFA duties, or a different statute.
The PWFA
- Effective June 27, 2023. The EEOC final rule's June 18, 2024 date is a distractor, not the statute's effective date.
- Applies to employers with 15 or more employees, reaching the statute through the covered-entity and respondent chain at 2000e(n) to Title VII's 15-employee definition. Not 20, not 10, not the FMLA's 50, and not all employers regardless of size. A 12-employee start-up is outside it on count.
- Duty: reasonable accommodation of known limitations related to pregnancy, childbirth or related medical conditions of a qualified employee, unless the covered entity demonstrates undue hardship on the operation of the business, as defined in ADA section 12111.
The trigger is a known limitation, not a stated preference. Twelve workweeks of job-protected leave is FMLA, not PWFA.
Forced leave
The PWFA expressly forbids requiring a qualified employee to take leave, paid or unpaid, if another reasonable accommodation can be provided. With an open light-duty station that resolves a lifting restriction, the effective action is to stop the leave placement and assign light duty. Do not make her exhaust paid time off first, and do not demand a physician's certification that she can perform all original duties — that reverses the accommodation obligation.