If you have ever asked your employer for extra bathroom breaks during a difficult pregnancy, time off for fertility treatment, or a cooler workspace during menopause, there is a real chance that accommodation currently rests on federal rules that the government is now reconsidering. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the federal agency that enforces workplace anti-discrimination law, has signaled it plans to narrow the scope of its regulations under the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA), with a proposed revision expected in November 2026.

What the PWFA covers right now

The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act requires employers with 15 or more employees to provide reasonable accommodations for workers whose limitations are linked to pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions. In practice, that has meant adjustments like extra rest breaks, modified lifting duties, flexible scheduling for prenatal visits, or permission to keep water at a workstation.

The EEOC finalized detailed regulations in April 2024, interpreting the phrase related medical conditions broadly. That broad reading is precisely what EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas has taken issue with, and it is the foundation the agency now wants to revisit.

The regulations were already trimmed once before: in May 2025, a federal judge struck down the portion of the rule that required employers to accommodate elective abortions. That ruling came after the EEOC received roughly 100,000 public comments on the original draft, and more than half of those comments asked the agency to leave abortion out of the definition.

What the EEOC wants to change

According to a filing the EEOC submitted to the executive branch's Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the agency intends to revise its interpretation of the words pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions. The filing does not reveal the new wording, but public statements by EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas point clearly to the direction.

When the current regulations were adopted in 2024, Lucas argued that the rule fundamentally conflated pregnancy and childbirth accommodation with accommodation of the female sex more broadly. She wrote that the Commission extends the new accommodation requirements to reach virtually every condition, circumstance, or procedure that relates to any aspect of the female reproductive system.

Lucas also wrote that the rule opens the door to requiring accommodations potentially extending to a myriad of conditions ranging from infertility to menstruation to hormone issues to menopause.

That list is the most direct signal available. If the revised definition tracks Lucas's reasoning, conditions including fertility treatment, endometriosis, menstrual disorders, and menopause symptoms are the ones most at risk of losing explicit coverage under the PWFA. Nothing is settled until the proposal is published in the Federal Register, but those are the areas to follow closely.

What has not changed, at least for now

A planned revision is not a new rule. Federal rulemaking follows a defined sequence under the Administrative Procedure Act: the EEOC publishes a proposed rule, a public comment period opens, and the agency reviews those comments before issuing a final version. The EEOC expects the comment period to close sometime in January 2027. Until a final rule takes effect, the April 2024 regulations, minus the abortion provision a court already removed, remain the controlling framework.

The statute itself is also unchanged. Congress passed the PWFA, and an agency's reinterpretation of its implementing regulations cannot repeal the underlying law. Core protections for pregnancy and childbirth accommodations are not in dispute in this proceeding.

The EEOC also reports that its pregnancy enforcement activity has continued. An agency spokesperson told HR Dive that since the start of the second Trump administration, the agency has taken more than 40 public enforcement actions involving pregnancy-related discrimination, including lawsuits, subpoena enforcement actions, and public pre-litigation settlements under the PWFA, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Separately, the agency has filed 24 pregnancy discrimination lawsuits and secured $1.6 million in relief for affected workers.

Steps you can take if you rely on an accommodation now

You do not need to renegotiate anything today. The rules have not changed yet. That said, a few practical steps can protect your position if the rules do shift later:

• Get your accommodation in writing. If the arrangement was agreed verbally, send a brief follow-up email to your manager or HR contact summarizing what was agreed and when it started. That record matters if someone later questions the basis for it.
• Keep your medical documentation current. A letter from your healthcare provider that describes your specific limitation and what adjustments help makes it easier to defend your accommodation under any legal framework, not just the PWFA.
• Check your employer's standalone policy. Many employers set accommodation policies that go beyond the federal minimum. A narrower federal rule does not automatically shrink those internal policies, so yours may still apply.
• Track any changes in how your request is handled. If an accommodation is reduced or withdrawn, ask for the reason in writing and note the date. That paper trail is useful whether you file with the EEOC, pursue a state agency complaint, or simply want clarity.

Where other protections may still apply

The PWFA is one layer of protection among several, and understanding the others gives you a fuller picture of where you stand.

Conditions that might fall outside a narrower PWFA definition could still qualify for adjustments under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) if they substantially limit a major life activity. The ADA pathway generally asks for more medical documentation than the PWFA does, which is another reason the paperwork step above is worth doing now rather than later.

State law is also a meaningful variable, and the gap between federal and state protection can be significant. California's Fair Employment and Housing Act, New York's Human Rights Law, and similar statutes in other states may provide pregnancy and disability accommodation rights that extend beyond what federal rules require. When the federal floor drops, the state ceiling can still hold. If you are unsure where your state stands, your state's civil rights or labor agency is a sensible starting point. California workers can contact the Civil Rights Department (CRD); New York workers can reach out to the New York State Division of Human Rights or the NY Department of Labor.

You also have a voice in the process itself. Once the EEOC publishes its proposal in the Federal Register, any member of the public, including individual workers, can submit a comment before the January deadline. The agency is required to consider those comments, and specific, first-person accounts describing how a particular accommodation kept someone employed carry real weight in the administrative record.

If you are evaluating job offers or thinking about a move, how a prospective employer handles health-related flexibility requests is worth investigating before you sign anything. Verified reviews from people who have actually asked for adjustments tend to tell you more than any policy page, and it is a reasonable topic to explore during the interview process.

The EEOC's proposal is expected to be published within weeks. Until it is, your current protections remain intact. The most useful preparation is straightforward: document what you have, know which federal and state frameworks may still cover you, and submit a comment when the window opens if your situation would be directly affected.