Walmart Settles Pregnancy Bias Class Action For $14M

Walmart has settled a class action lawsuit for $14 million filed by pregnant workers who claim the company discriminated against them because they were pregnant.

According to the Walmart class action settlement, the amount each Class Member will receive ranges between $819 and $2,049.

“For comparison purposes, $2,049.24 is roughly equivalent to 215.7 hours of backpay at the average hourly rate for a Walmart sales associate of $9.50 per hour as estimated by Plaintiffs’ expert,” the Walmart class action settlement states.

In their Walmart class action, plaintiffs Talisa Borders, Otisha Woolbright, and Stacey Lewis asserted that Walmart had a written policy that was discriminatory until March 2014 that did not provide pregnant workers with the same benefits provided to other workers, which they say is in violation of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978.

In March 2013, plaintiff Borders told Walmart that she couldn’t lift more than 25 pounds because of a pregnancy-related restriction. The motion for preliminary approval of the settlement states that Walmart denied her request for light duty even though this type of duty was provided to those that were injured on the job.

The motion claims that Walmart told Borders that she was required to take an unpaid leave of absence, which was based on Walmart’s policy.

Both plaintiffs Borders and Woolbright filed this class action lawsuit in May 2017, over allegations that Walmart denied their requests for accommodations because of their pregnancies between March 2013 and March 2014 

The Walmart class action lawsuit alleged that the “policy treated workers with disabilities more favorably than pregnant workers who were similar in their ability or inability to work.”

In April 2018, Walmart was denied a motion to dismiss the case. Walmart had filed the motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim and also moved to dismiss plaintiff Woolbright’s claims for lack of personal jurisdiction.

The proposed settlement agreement states that the parties have proposed a 60-day notice period which would begin after an order preliminarily approving the agreement.

“Walmart will provide class members and potential class member names and last-known contact information, including email addresses if available, to the claims administrator within 10 business days of the order. Notice by U.S. Mail, and email where available, will follow within 20 business days of the order,” the motion for preliminary approval states.

The Walmart class action settlement also states that the attorneys for the plaintiffs will ask for no more than 33.33 percent of the fund for attorneys’ fees and not more than $275,00 in legal costs.

The motion states that there are two sets of proposed Classes in this case because some pregnant workers were processed by Walmart’s centralized Accommodation Service Center (ASC), while other requests were not.

“The ASC Settlement Class consists of all women employed by Walmart at stores in the 39 National Policy States who were denied requested accommodations because of pregnancy by the ASC during the Time Period (between March 19, 2013 and March 5, 2014, inclusive),” the Walmart settlement states.

Also, “The Non-ASC Settlement Class consists of all women employed by Walmart at stores nationwide who were denied requested accommodations because of pregnancy by store level management and/or store-level human resource personnel during the Time Period,” the motion for preliminary approval notes.

Were you denied accommodations at work while being pregnant? Leave a message in the comments section below.

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The plaintiffs are represented by Mary Anne Sedey and Donna Harper of Sedey Harper Westhoff PC, Ellen Eardley, Cyrus Mehri, Michael D. Lieder and Lauren Nussbaum of Mehri & Skalet PLLC, Dina Bakst, Elizabeth Chen and Elizabeth Gedmark of A Better Balance and Emily Martin and Sunu Chandy of the National Women’s Law Center.

The Walmart Pregnancy Class Action Lawsuit is Borders, et al. v. Walmart Stores Inc., Case No. 3:17-cv-00506, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois.

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