Jennifer Hatch was having trouble breathing in a Lancaster, New York, warehouse. She needed to sit down because her doctor had identified her pregnancy as high-risk. A chair was close by. She was informed by a manager that she was unable to use it because her request for accommodations had not yet been granted. She frequently left early to go to the hospital. Every time, Amazon deducted her unpaid time off. She eventually lost her job for breaking an attendance rule.
This account is at the heart of a proposed nationwide class-action lawsuit against Amazon that was filed in Brooklyn federal court on September 8, 2026. The plaintiffs claim that Amazon has a company-wide practice of refusing pregnant warehouse workers basic accommodations. A Better Balance, a nonprofit workers’ rights organization, and the civil rights law firm Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel filed the lawsuit on behalf of four former employees: Jennifer Hatch, Willamina Barclay, Kristina Green, and Dazaria Parks.
The accommodations in question are simple. According to the lawsuit, Amazon refused or postponed requests for chairs, more restroom breaks, water access, reduced workloads, and time off for prenatal appointments. Employers with 15 or more employees must make reasonable accommodations for pregnancy-related conditions under the federal Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, which was passed with bipartisan support in 2022 and went into effect in June 2023, unless doing so would place an unreasonable burden on the company. The second-largest private employer in the US finds it difficult to understand how a stool causes undue hardship.
It’s especially hard to read Willamina Barclay’s situation without stopping. Her complaint of severe abdominal pain, which she attributes to heavy lifting at work, led to her being wheeled out of Amazon’s Rochester warehouse on June 16, 2025, and transported to the hospital. She received a termination warning from Amazon the following day, not because of the lifting but rather because she had exceeded her unpaid time off limit due to the hospital visit. She was also penalized by the company for the hours she “worked partially” on the day she was admitted to the hospital. She was let go five days after the warning.
The lawsuit’s descriptions are contested by Amazon. Over 99.9% of pregnancy-related accommodation requests were approved by Amazon during the previous year, according to a company representative, and the plaintiffs’ accounts “contain inaccuracies and omit important details.” Sitting with that line is worthwhile.
A 99.9% approval rate may seem comforting, but keep in mind that Amazon employs well over a million people, so even a small percentage represents thousands of individual workers. Additionally, delays, documentation requirements, and retaliation for absences that take place while requests are still pending are not taken into account by the approval rate.
This lawsuit wasn’t born out of thin air. In October 2025, New Jersey filed a lawsuit against Amazon, alleging widespread discrimination against pregnant and disabled warehouse workers. In 2022, New York brought a comparable lawsuit. As a direct result of Jennifer Hatch’s own discrimination complaint against Amazon, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission itself determined in February 2026 that there was reasonable cause to believe the company had systemically violated the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act. That is an important detail. It implies that this is more than just four ex-workers attempting to take on a massive corporation. After reviewing the evidence, a federal agency concluded that the concern seems legitimate.
Beneath all of this is a larger tension. Tight attendance, volume, and speed were the cornerstones of Amazon’s logistics operation. These systems, which are mostly automated, track hours, breaks, and absences with accuracy that is difficult to modify for unique situations. By its very nature, pregnancy is full of unique situations. This lawsuit is essentially about the collision between those two realities, and until the legal and operational incentives actually change, this collision will continue to occur at businesses built on warehouse efficiency.
The course of this case and the speed at which the courts will proceed are still unknown. However, it appears that the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act will soon be put to the test in a case involving one of the nation’s most closely watched employers.
