The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has filed a lawsuit alleging a Florida poker room has violated the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA) by refusing to provide reasonable accommodations to pregnant workers. 

According to the EEOC, BestBet, Florida’s largest poker room, maintained a strict policy requiring employees to resign if they missed two weeks or more of work and did not otherwise qualify for leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act. When one woman with a high-risk pregnancy requested to miss six shifts over a two-and-a-half-week period in January 2025, on the advice of her doctor, BestBet forced her to quit. BestBet forced another employee to leave the company in February 2025 after she requested leave to have her baby. 

The PWFA is a federal law that requires employers to reasonably accommodate employees’ and applicants’ known limitations related to pregnancy and childbirth, absent undue hardship, including accommodations that require modifying the employer’s application of leave-limiting policies. 

For California employers, it’s also important to remember that state law provides overlapping—and, in some areas, broader—protections for pregnancy, childbirth, and related medical conditions. Depending on the circumstances, an employee may be entitled to reasonable accommodations and job-protected leave under the California Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) and Pregnancy Disability Leave (PDL), in addition to other leave rights that may apply. Employers should always evaluate requests on a case-by-case basis and avoid rigid “no-fault” attendance or maximum-leave policies that cut off consideration of required accommodations. 

Key takeaways for employers: 

• Train managers and HR to recognize pregnancy-related limitations and promptly engage in the interactive process (and document it) before making decisions that could negatively affect an employee’s terms and conditions of employment. 

• Review attendance and leave policies—removing references to “must be 100% healed” and adjusting maximum-leave provisions—to confirm they allow legally required exceptions and do not compel employees to resign. 

• Coordinate federal and California obligations (e.g., PWFA, FEHA/PDL and other applicable leave laws) and apply the most protective rule when multiple laws cover the same situation.