Workers, not their bosses, should make their own decisions about their bodies and if, when, and how they have kids. And they shouldn’t be fired or face discrimination for that decision. But across the country, employees face punishment, threats, or being fired for decisions they make regarding their reproductive lives. A Reproductive Health Non-Discrimination Act provides an explicit protection for employees’ reproductive health decision making, protecting them from an employer’s discrimination.

Reproductive health discrimination is happening across the country. Here are just a few examples of this widespread issue:

• Marta Bueno was fired from her hospitality job in New York, shortly after telling her manager she was pregnant via in-vitro fertilization.¹
• Vivian Alecio was fired from her job as a customer service representative in California after taking time off to undergo in-vitro fertilization.²
• Nicole Ducharme was fired from her job as a bartender and server in Louisiana after telling her manager she was pregnant and needed two days off to have an abortion.³
• Emily Comer was fired from her job as a nurse because of her use of an IUD.⁴
• One company fired at least nine employees in recent years for having premarital sex.⁵

Fortunately, states are taking action to protect employees, introducing and passing legislation to make it clear that bosses cannot discriminate against an employee because of their personal reproductive health care decisions.

States and localities across the country have enacted protections against reproductive health discrimination and more should follow suit. These laws prohibit employers from punishing, threatening, or firing employees for accessing birth control, abortion, fertility or sterilization care, miscarriage management care, and prenatal, intranatal, and postpartum care. In New York City, the law also covers sexual health care decisions, including accessing sexually transmitted disease prevention, testing, and treatment.

The following states and localities⁶ have enacted explicit reproductive health non-discrimination protections: California;⁷ Delaware;⁸ Hawaii;⁹ Illinois;¹⁰ Michigan;¹¹ New York;¹² District of Columbia;¹³ Chicago, Illinois;¹⁴ Cook County, Illinois;¹⁵ New York City, New York;¹⁶ and St. Louis, Missouri.¹⁷

Some of the states that have considered bills that would prohibit reproductive health discrimination include: Iowa; Maine; Missouri; North Carolina; Ohio; Oklahoma; Texas; Virginia; Washington; and Wisconsin.

States should ensure their residents are protected from reproductive health discrimination, which is what their constituents want.

States can and should specifically prohibit employers from taking adverse actions against their employees because of an employee’s reproductive health decision. This is especially important now; with abortion access in crisis, and increased attacks on contraception and fertility treatments, like IVF, people’s reproductive health decisions are increasingly under scrutiny.

Protecting employee’s reproductive health decisions enjoys widespread support from voters. A June 2026 poll by the National Women’s Law Center found that 81% of voters nationwide support lawmakers working to make sure women can’t be fired or discriminated against because of their reproductive health decisions. This includes support across party lines, gender, and marital status.

Although many state and federal laws protect against reproductive health discrimination as a form of sex or pregnancy discrimination, narrow or erroneous court decisions have created loopholes in these laws. For example:

• A federal court in Michigan held that firing an employee for taking time off work to undergo fertility treatment was not pregnancy discrimination under federal law, based on a fundamental mischaracterization of infertility as not part of “pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions.”¹⁸
• In one case of a woman who was fired for using in-vitro fertilization, an investigator for the state’s agency charged with enforcing anti-discrimination laws upheld her termination. The agency said that she had not been fired for becoming pregnant, which would have been illegal, but for undergoing in-vitro fertilization, which was not protected under state law.¹⁹

In the face of these loopholes, as well as serious attacks on both reproductive rights and workers’ rights, policies that explicitly protect workers from discrimination based on their reproductive health decisions are critical.

For more information about measures that would protect against reproductive health discrimination, please contact [email protected]. 

Find the official factsheet here.

^{1 Bueno v. Eurostars Hotel Company, S.L. et al, No. 1:2021cv00535 – Document 157 (S.D.N.Y. 2026).}

^{2 Alecio v. Jet Aviation Flight Services, Inc., Not Reported in Cal.Rptr. (2025).}

^{3 Ducharme v. Crescent City Deja Vu, L.L.C. et al, No. 2:2018cv04484 – Document 99 (E.D. La. 2019).}

^{4 Patterson v. Virginia Dep’t of Corr., No. 3:23CV757 (DJN), 2024 WL 1704669 (E.D. Va. Apr. 19, 2024).}

^{5 O’Connor v. The Lampo Group, LLC, No. 3:2020cv00628 – Document 105 (M.D. Tenn. 2025).}

^{6 Several states and localities currently face challenges to their laws protecting against reproductive health discrimination, including Michigan (Right to Life Michigan v. Nessel), New York City (Evergreen Assoc., Inc. v. City of New York), and New York (Evergreen Assoc., Inc. v. Hochul). The cases Pregnancy Care Ctr. Of Rockford v. Bennett, challenging Illinois’s law, and CompassCare v. Hochul, challenging New York’s law, were dismissed in 2026 and 2025 respectively. The case Our Lady’s Inn v. City of St. Louis closed in February 2019.}

^{7 Cal Gov. Code §§ 12921(a), 12940(a)–(d), (j)(1).}

^{8 Del. Code Ann. Tit. 19, §711.}

^{9 Haw. Rev. Stat. § 378-2.}

^{10 775 Ill. Comp. Stat. 5/1-102(A), 5/1-103(O-2), (Q).}

^{11 Mich. Comp. Laws § 37.2201(d).}

^{12 N.Y. Lab. Law § 203-e.}

^{13 D.C. Code § 2-1401.05.}

^{14 Chicago Code Tit. 6, Art. II, §§ 6-120-010, 6-120-015.}

^{15 Cook Cnty., Ill., Code § 42-30, et seq.}

^{16 New York City, N.Y., Code §§ 8-107(1)(a)–(d), (2)(b)–(d).}

^{17 City of St. Louis Ordinance 70459.}

^{18 LaPorta v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., 163 F. Supp. 2d 758 (W.D. Mich. 2001).}

^{19 “Teacher Says She Was Fired over in Vitro,” NBCNews.com, September 28, 2006, https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/teacher-says-she-was-fired-over-vitro-flna1C9468181.}