The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit reversed a lower court’s ruling in a case brought by Tennessee and 16 other states challenging a Biden administration-era Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) final rule on Thursday.
In 2022, Congress passed the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act which makes it unlawful for a covered employer to “not make reasonable accommodations to the known limitations related to the pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions of a qualified employee.”
The EEOC, which was tasked with issuing regulations to implement the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, issued a final rule to implement the Act, however, added “termination of pregnancy, including via miscarriage, stillbirth, or abortion” to the list of accommodations provided under the Act.
The rule interprets the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act to force covered employers, including the State of Tennessee, to allocate resources to support workers’ decisions to terminate pregnancies.
Tennessee and 16 other states sued the EEOC over the final rule rewriting the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act and sought an injunction against enforcement of the rule and a declaratory judgment that the rule was unlawful.
A U.S. district court initially dismissed the case, arguing that the states lacked standing to bring such a case.
On Thursday, however, the Court of Appeals reversed the district court’s ruling, arguing that the states have standing to challenge the rule as they are “the object of the EEOC’s regulatory action.”
“[The States] are employers covered by the Act and the Rule,” Thursday’s ruling by the Court of Appeals said.
“The States allege that the Rule compels them to provide accommodations to employees that the States otherwise would not provide, to change their employment practices and policies, and to refrain from pro-life messaging that arguably would be “coercive” and thus proscribed by the Rule. Because the States are the object of an agency action, they are injured by the imposition of new regulatory obligations. The injury is caused by the agency’s action, and a judicial decision setting aside the action would remedy the injury,” the ruling added.
Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti said Thursday’s ruling in the case is “another win” for the Volunteer State.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
