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A retail manager in Frisco tells her store director she’s pregnant, asks for a temporary lifting restriction during her second trimester, and is fired six weeks later for “performance issues” no one has raised in three years. A nurse at a Dallas hospital requests a slight modification to her shift schedule to accommodate severe morning sickness and is told her position is being eliminated. A new mother returning to work in Plano asks for a private space to pump breast milk and finds herself laid off in a “restructuring” that affects only her position. The Wrongful Termination Lawyers Dallas employees consult will tell them that the legal framework for these cases changed substantially in 2023 with the federal Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, and that the federal statute now closes accommodation gaps that Texas state law had left open for years. The cases brought today look very different from the cases brought five years ago, and understanding the framework matters as much as understanding any single piece of it.
The Texas Gap That the PWFA Filled
Texas has long had pregnancy discrimination protections through Chapter 21 of the Texas Labor Code, which prohibits discrimination in employment based on sex, including pregnancy, childbirth, and related medical conditions. The federal Pregnancy Discrimination Act, which amended Title VII in 1978, provides parallel protections at the federal level. Both statutes prohibit employers from treating pregnant workers worse than similarly situated non-pregnant workers.
The gap in both frameworks involved reasonable accommodations. Neither Chapter 21 nor the PDA required employers to actively accommodate pregnancy-related limitations the way the ADA requires accommodations for disabilities. Pregnant workers whose conditions did not rise to the level of an ADA disability often had no accommodation rights at all. They could only seek the same treatment that other temporarily limited workers received, which sometimes meant no treatment at all if the employer offered no light duty to anyone.
The Texas Workplace Equity Act, which would have added explicit pregnancy accommodation requirements at the state level, was introduced in multiple sessions of the Texas Legislature without enactment. Texas pregnant workers were left relying on the Pregnancy Discrimination Act’s narrower comparator analysis or on the ADA when their conditions were severe enough to qualify as disabilities.
The federal Pregnant Workers Fairness Act closed this gap. The statute, signed into law in December 2022 and effective June 27, 2023, requires covered employers to provide reasonable accommodations for known limitations related to pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions, unless the accommodation would impose an undue hardship on the employer’s business operations. The framework parallels the ADA’s reasonable accommodation structure but applies to pregnancy-related limitations regardless of whether they rise to the level of a disability.
What the PWFA Actually Requires
The PWFA applies to private and public sector employers with 15 or more employees, with the same coverage threshold as Title VII and the ADA. The statute’s central obligation is the duty to provide reasonable accommodations for known limitations related to pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions, unless the accommodation would create undue hardship.
The covered limitations are broad. EEOC regulations implementing the PWFA, finalized in 2024, define the term to include physical or mental conditions related to, affected by, or arising out of pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions. Common pregnancy-related limitations like nausea, fatigue, lifting restrictions, the need for more frequent restroom breaks, the need to avoid certain environmental exposures, and postpartum recovery from childbirth all qualify.
The interactive process under the PWFA tracks the ADA’s framework closely. The employee discloses a limitation. The employer engages in a good-faith dialogue to identify the limitation, the requested accommodation, and any alternatives that might address the limitation. The employer cannot unilaterally substitute an accommodation that does not address the actual limitation. The employer cannot demand medical documentation beyond what is needed to verify the limitation.
The PWFA expressly prohibits requiring an employee to take leave when another reasonable accommodation would allow the employee to continue working. This provision matters because employers have historically responded to pregnancy-related limitations by pushing the employee onto unpaid leave rather than providing the requested accommodation. Forced leave, when other accommodations would have worked, is now itself a violation.
How the Texas Litigation Affected Enforcement
The PWFA’s path in Texas has been complicated by litigation. In Texas v. Garland, decided by the Northern District of Texas on February 27, 2024, the court enjoined the EEOC from enforcing the PWFA against the State of Texas as an employer. The decision rested on a Quorum Clause challenge to how the underlying legislation was passed, arguing that proxy voting during the COVID-19 pandemic produced a constitutionally defective enactment. The injunction applied only to the State of Texas as a public employer, leaving private employers in Texas fully subject to the PWFA throughout this period.
The Fifth Circuit reversed in State of Texas v. Bondi, decided on August 15, 2025. The court held that the Quorum Clause does not require physical presence and vacated the lower court’s injunction. The decision restored PWFA enforcement against Texas state employers, completing the framework so that all covered employers in Texas, public and private alike, are subject to the statute.
A few carve-outs remain. The Western District of Louisiana issued a preliminary injunction in 2024 limiting PWFA enforcement of abortion-related accommodations for employees primarily based in Louisiana or Mississippi and for certain Catholic religious organizations. The District of North Dakota issued a preliminary injunction limiting PWFA enforcement against certain Catholic organizations as to abortion and infertility-treatment accommodations. The Eighth Circuit revived a 17-state challenge to PWFA regulations in February 2025 that may produce additional limitations on the regulatory framework over time.
The EEOC under its current administration has signaled an intent to revise the Biden-era PWFA regulations, with the rulemaking process likely to produce some adjustments to the existing framework over time. The statute itself remains in effect, and the regulatory framework remains binding pending any revisions.
How PWFA Cases Get Built in Texas
A successful PWFA case in Texas follows a recognizable pattern. The worker disclosed pregnancy or a pregnancy-related limitation, requested an accommodation, faced delay or denial of the accommodation, and was either terminated, forced into leave, or otherwise subjected to adverse action. The case requires documentary evidence of the request, the employer’s response, the timing of the adverse action, and the connection between the protected activity and the firing.
The interactive process record carries significant weight. An employer that documented a thorough good-faith dialogue, considered the worker’s request seriously, and offered alternatives that addressed the underlying limitation has a defense. An employer with no records of any interactive process, or with records showing perfunctory or hostile responses, faces a much harder defense.
Internal communications about the pregnancy, even casual ones, become evidence in discovery. Comments by supervisors expressing frustration about the timing of the pregnancy, concerns about the worker’s commitment going forward, or assumptions about reduced productivity after childbirth often surface and damage the employer’s defense considerably.
The temporal proximity between the protected activity and the adverse action drives the causation analysis. Terminations within weeks of the accommodation request, the pregnancy disclosure, or the return from maternity leave support strong inferences of unlawful motivation.
How These Claims Stack With Other Theories
A pregnancy-related termination case in Texas often supports parallel theories. Pregnancy discrimination under Title VII and Chapter 21 covers terminations motivated by pregnancy itself, as opposed to the failure to accommodate. ADA disability discrimination may apply when the pregnancy-related condition rose to the level of an ADA disability, including conditions like preeclampsia, gestational diabetes, postpartum depression, and complications affecting major life activities. FMLA retaliation may apply when the worker took FMLA leave before the termination.
The PUMP for Nursing Mothers Act, which expanded protections for nursing mothers in 2022, applies specifically to lactation accommodations. A worker terminated after requesting time and space to pump breast milk has claims under the PUMP Act that are distinct from the pregnancy-related claims that preceded them.
The Procedural Pieces That Matter
A federal PWFA claim requires filing a charge with the EEOC within 180 days of the discriminatory act, extended to 300 days because Texas is a deferral state with the Texas Workforce Commission Civil Rights Division as the parallel agency. The right-to-sue letter is required before filing in federal court, with a 90-day window after the letter is issued.
The Chapter 21 pregnancy discrimination claim runs through the TWC CRD with a 180-day filing window for non-sexual-harassment claims. Cases are typically dual-filed to preserve both pathways.
The Next Step If You Were Fired During or After Pregnancy
A Texas worker terminated during pregnancy, after requesting an accommodation, or after returning from maternity leave should not assume the firing is just an at-will action the employer can defend. The federal PWFA, the federal PDA, the ADA, the Texas Chapter 21 framework, the FMLA, and the PUMP Act together provide a strong combined toolkit, and the cases that succeed often combine claims under multiple statutes. The Mundaca Law Firm represents employees throughout the Dallas area, and a conversation with the Wrongful Termination Lawyers Dallas professionals at the firm trust will produce a clear-eyed read on the available paths and the realistic timeline. The deadlines on these claims run quickly, and the strongest cases are the ones that move forward while the documentary record is still intact.
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