Top photo caption: U.S. Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., who hails from the Diocese of Trenton, is seen on Capitol Hill in Washington March 10, 2021. OSV News photo/Ken Cedeno, Pool via Reuters
By Kate Scanlon, OSV News
WASHINGTON OSV News – Fifty members of Congress offered their support to a lawsuit by the U.S. Catholic bishops’ conference and other Catholic organizations seeking to block a federal agency from enforcing an abortion provision within a set of federal regulations meant to add workplace protections for pregnant workers.
Reps. Chris Smith, R-N.J., who hails from the Diocese of Trenton, Erin Houchin, R-Ind., and Sens. Bill Cassidy, R-La., and James Lankford, R-Okla., and 46 other Republican members of Congress submitted an amicus brief in support of the lawsuit United States Conference of Catholic Bishops v. the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, arguing the regulation as published under the Biden administration contradicted the intent of the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act.
“Flouting the law Congress passed, the EEOC transformed the PWFA into a draconian national abortion-accommodations mandate that tramples the conscience rights of those who object to abortion, including some of the very faith-based organizations that supported the PWFA,” the brief said.
The regulations at the center of the lawsuit govern the implementation of the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, bipartisan legislation passed by Congress and signed into law by then-President Joe Biden in December 2022. The law, which went into effect in June 2023, prohibits employment practices that discriminate against making reasonable accommodations for qualified employees due to their pregnancy, childbirth or “related medical conditions.”
But final regulations to implement the law published in April 2024 included abortion as among those conditions.
The amicus brief came shortly after the Catholic groups on May 18 asked the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to block the regulation.
The EEOC did not immediately respond to a request for comment from OSV News.
In 2024, the USCCB, alongside other Catholic groups, filed suit to challenge final regulations for the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act over the inclusion of abortion, arguing that was not Congress’ intent in passing the law.
Becket, a Washington-based religious liberty law firm, filed that lawsuit on behalf of the USCCB, as well as The Catholic University of America and the dioceses of Lake Charles and Lafayette in Louisiana.
Laura Wolk Slavis, counsel at Becket, said in a May 19 statement, “Bureaucrats tried to twist a bipartisan law protecting pregnant women and their unborn babies into a mandate that Churches facilitate abortion within their own ministries.”
“If there’s one thing everyone should agree on about abortion, it’s that Uncle Sam can’t make Mother Teresa support it,” she said.
More broadly, three years after the law’s passage, its protections for pregnant workers are still unevenly met by some corporations, The New York Times recently reported.
Kate Scanlon is a national reporter for OSV News covering Washington. Follow her on X @kgscanlon.
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