Leadership1 publisher3 min readPublished
EEOC sues Fred Meyer over firing of two pregnant workers who sought accommodations
EEOC sued Kroger's Fred Meyer on September 30, alleging a Vancouver store fired two pregnant workers who asked for bathroom access. The complaint places the exposure with store managers who kept issuing attendance warnings after both women said their absences were pregnancy-related.
The Board Room · Leadership desk
What happened
- One worker, a cashier with severe pregnancy nausea, had her weekly hours cut from about 40 to roughly 32 and then to around 25, though she never asked for fewer, the complaint says.
- She was fired on October 18, 2023, later the same day she submitted a maternity leave request to cover childbirth and recovery.
- The second worker, refused any accommodation or discussion of options through September, was fired on September 27 after the store rejected her request to move to another store nearer her new home.
- The EEOC brings four counts under the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act: failure to accommodate, denial of job opportunities, punishment for seeking help, and retaliation.
Compiled by The Board RoomSomething wrong?How this is made
Why it matters
- exposure The refusals alleged were made inside one store by line managers and a store HR manager, so a chain's liability under the 2023 law is decided far below the people who write its attendance policy.
- decision Retailers that run one attendance rule for everyone now have to decide whether a pregnancy disclosure and an offered doctor's note pause the warnings until an accommodation is discussed.
- cost Kroger's subsidiary now carries the cost as a federal suit seeking back pay and damages for two workers from a single store.
The first worker's file ran 132 days from first written warning to firing [7]. The second worker's ran 29 [6]. Almost every dated entry in between is a step the store took against them. The first was warned on June 8, 2023, for four shifts missed in May, with no verbal warning beforehand [5]. A second warning and a week's unpaid suspension followed in July [7], then a warning the filing calls "last and final" in August [9]. The second worker was warned on August 29 for three absences and threatened with termination [12]. On September 20 she was warned again, for six absences, and suspended for four days without pay [14].
According to the complaint, Fred Meyer gave excessive absenteeism as the reason for the first firing [19]. On its face, absenteeism is a neutral reason. The complaint's answer is that the store knew why the absences happened. The first worker reminded management after her June warning that they were pregnancy-related [5]. The second told her supervisor she was pregnant on the day of her first warning [12]. When the first worker offered doctor's notes in July, a manager told her not to bother [7]. In August a manager refused a medical note excusing her absences and told her it would not help [9]. The EEOC's counts reach back past the firings to those refusals and the discipline around them [16].
The org chart in the complaint matters as much as the attendance policy. Around August, the first worker sought an open Lead Clerk job in Home Improvement that was off the register, guaranteed 40 hours a week and had easier bathroom access [10]. By then her weekly hours were down by more than a third [1], so the job would have been both an accommodation and a return to full time. Her direct manager raised her as a candidate. The HR manager refused to consider her [10].
The gap between a store decision and its legal cost is long here. The Act took effect on June 27, 2023 [2]. The first written warning predates it by 19 days [2], and the first firing came 113 days after it [3]. The EEOC filed on September 30, 2026, in the Western District of Washington [1], almost three years after that firing [4].
The requests themselves were small. The second worker asked the HR manager for frequent restroom breaks and excused absences for severe nausea [13]. The first asked to move off the register to a post nearer the bathroom, and was refused although positions were vacant [8]. The law applies to any employer with 15 or more workers [2]. At store level, the trade-off is register coverage and one attendance rule for everyone, set against a federal duty to provide reasonable accommodation for pregnancy-related conditions [2].
The case concerns one store in Vancouver [3]. The published account of the filing does not include a response from Fred Meyer or mention other suits the agency has brought under the Act, so one complaint is the whole of the evidence for an enforcement pattern. I think the lesson for frontline managers holds without one. In both women's cases, as the EEOC tells it, a pregnancy was disclosed, medical paperwork was offered, the warnings continued and a firing followed [12][13][14][15].
What to watch
- Fred Meyer's answer in the Western District of Washington, including how it treats discipline issued before the Act took effect on June 27, 2023.
- Whether the EEOC names more affected workers at the store; the complaint already describes the second woman as a "Class Member."
- Whether the agency files further Pregnant Workers Fairness Act suits built on attendance discipline that followed a pregnancy disclosure.