A federal judge in Texas this week dealt a blow to a landmark piece of legislation protecting pregnant workers by ruling that the U.S. House of Representatives did not have a quorum when the bill was passed, making it unenforceable.
The Pregnant Worker Fairness Act, which requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations to pregnant employees, was part of $1.7 trillion spending package that Congress passed it in slow 2022. U.S. Senator Bob Casey (Democrat of Pennsylvania) first introduced the bill in 2012 and worked for more than a decade to get it passed.
“Texas: It won’t let you have an abortion, but it also won’t do anything to help you have a safe and healthy pregnancy,” Casey said in a statement to the Capital-Star on Wednesday. “This is Republican rule at its finest and downright insulting to women in Texas and beyond who want and need to continue to work safely during their pregnancies.”
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Last February, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued the Biden administration, arguing that because members of Congress were allowed to vote by proxy on the spending package, there were not enough members physically present to meet the quorum required by the Constitution.
Then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has regularly allowed House members to vote by proxy during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Paxton’s lawsuit sought to block two provisions of the package that he said directly affected Texas: the PWFA and the $20 million Pilot program falls under the Department of Homeland Security’s responsibility to provide case management and other services to immigrants enrolled in alternatives to detention programs operated by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
U.S. District Judge James Wesley Hendrix, who was appointed Former President Donald Trump agreed with Paxton’s argument but said the scope of his ruling was “limited” and did not block the entire spending law.
“It has long been held in Supreme Court decisions that the Quorum Clause requires attendance, and the text of the Clause distinguishes absent members from a quorum and provides a mechanism for achieving a physical quorum by requiring absent members to attend,” he wrote in his ruling.
Hendrix ruled that Texas had no legal standing to challenge the immigration pilot program. He issued an injunction, which applies only to Texas state employees, prohibiting enforcement of the PWFA.
The decision gives the federal government a week to appeal. Any appeals will go to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, widely considered the most conservative court in the country.
University of Pittsburgh Law School associate professor Greer Donley told the Capital-Star that the narrow scope of Hendrix’s ruling limits it for now. But if it is upheld on appeal, according to the legal principle convincing authorityAnother judge could review the case and follow the opinion of the State of Texas.
“But that would have to be the subject of separate legal proceedings,” she noted.
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Donley added that if the appeals court upheld the Texas judge’s opinion, it would likely lead to more lawsuits.
“Of course, most of COVID happened during the Biden administration when Democrats were in power, so that would skew the type of challenges that could be made under that theory,” she said. “If it were to be sustained, it would certainly provide a 100% blueprint for invalidating literally any legislation that was passed where proxies were used and a quorum was not available.”
The PWFA filled a gap in federal legal protections for pregnant and breastfeeding workers that was not covered by existing laws such as Americans with Disabilities Act and Pregnancy Discrimination Act part of the Civil Rights Act.
The Act requires public and private sector employers with 15 or more employees to provide pregnant employees with “reasonable accommodations” for pregnancy-related restrictions, such as permission to sit or stand while performing work duties and modified break or shift patterns, unless doing so would pose an undue hardship to the employer.
Labor rights groups have hailed the law as a breakthrough for civil rights.
However, Paxton argued in his lawsuit that the costs of responding to complaints under the PWFA would be prohibitive, suggesting he expected Texas to face significant costs.
“As a result of these new obligations, Texas and its agencies must spend time and money understanding these legal requirements, developing new policies and training, providing accommodations, and responding to EEOC allegations and resulting litigation,” he wrote.
State of Texas v. Merrick Garland et al. By PennCapitalStar on Scribd
