The Smithsonian Institution regularly violates the legal rights of nursing mothers by failing to provide them with adequate space and privacy to pump breast milk at work, according to a letter sent today to Smithsonian Secretary David Skorton by the American Civil Liberties Union of the Nation’s Capital (ACLU-DC) and the First Shift Justice Project.
The letter documents the situation at two different Smithsonian museums, which the ACLU-DC and First Shift believe are representative of “a persistent theme of management indifference and lack of knowledge about lactation accommodation requirements under federal law.”
According to the letter, the Smithsonian Institution has no formal policy about workplace accommodations for nursing mothers and does little to accommodate their employees. As a result, women have pumped in bathrooms, had their breasts inadvertently exposed to coworkers who walk in to the rooms in which they are pumping, and pumped in spaces with no basic amenities (such as a table on which to place their equipment or an electrical outlet). Federal law requires employers to provide a secure, private place other than a bathroom, for women to express breast milk.
“The federal government has recognized the health benefits of breastfeeding and passed the Reasonable Break Time for Nursing Mothers Act to advance that priority,” said Jennifer Wedekind, ACLU-DC staff attorney. “Despite this, new mothers frequently return to work and face substantial obstacles to breastfeeding when their employers fail to provide a private, clean, secure location to pump breast milk.”
The Nursing Mothers Provision of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, passed in 2010, requires employers to provide covered employees accommodations to express breast milk at work. Employers are requires to provide reasonable, unpaid break time for employees to pump breast milk, as well as “a place, other than a bathroom, that is shielded from view and free from intrusion from coworkers and the public.”
“Women who request accommodations to pump at work should not be left by their employers to ‘fend for themselves,’” said Laura Brown, executive director of the First Shift Justice Project. “This is tantamount to a denial of their right to pump and will significantly deter women from breastfeeding after they return to work. Just like any other law which affects a business, it is the employer’s responsibility to take affirmative steps to ensure its workplace is compliant.”
The ACLU-DC and First Shift called on the Smithsonian Institution to draft and implement an agency-wide policy on workplace accommodations for employees who are nursing, to train all human resources and management level employees in that policy, and to provide notice to all Smithsonian employees about the institution’s policy and their rights under the law.