Human Resource Blog

Do I qualify for disability if I am pregnant and my employer is no longer allowing me to work?

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I am 36 weeks pregnant and my employer has forced me to quit working as of last week.
I have my doctors permission to keep working in my current position. My employer has offered me a job in the office for only a fraction of my previous pay. They argue that it looks bad to have someone that is “so big” working in a restaurant. I’m 5′7″ and 145 pounds at 36 weeks pregnant. According to my doctor I am very healthy and have gained an appropriate amount of weight for my body type. I am frustrated because this is not an issue of my employer looking out for my well being but rather trying to keep themselves from “looking bad by having a pregnant girl working so hard”.
I recently talked to a friend that works as a teacher and did not have paid maternity leave available to her. She was told by her administrators to apply for short term disability and received a check within a week to cover her time off work. Do I qualify for something like this?

There are really two issues here. Can the employer require a healthy pregnant woman to go on leave? And, can the worker collect short term disability pay?

Can the employer require a healthy pregnant woman to go on leave? Under the federal Pregnancy Discrimination Act or PDA, an employer cannot require a worker to go on maternity leave as long as the woman has her doctor’s permission to continue working. They can require that the doctor provide a “fitness for duty” certification that the employee is physically able to work. But only the woman and her doctor can decide when she needs to go on leave. The PDA is a federal law enforced by the US Department of Labor.

Many women today work at all stages of pregnancy, and it’s bizarre that the employer would feel that a pregnant woman who wants to work is an embarrassment. Many women want to spend as much time with the baby after birth as possible, so they work right up until they go into labor. An employer cannot prevent this.

Can the worker collect short term disability pay? That will depend. Not every employer offers short term disability insurance or benefits. Only 5 states (Hawaii, New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island and California) offer these benefits to all workers. Even when the benefits are offered, they are only provided to workers who are medically unable to work. So unless the employee has a note from her doctor stating that she is unable to work, she would not qualify.

An employer who was embarrassed to have a pregnant worker lifting heavy trays could a) ask someone else (maybe a busboy) to do it for her or b) offer her another position, at the same salary, perhaps in the office.