By Jack Tuckner, Esq.
If you are returning from maternity leave and you are breastfeeding your baby, you are definitely entitled to pump milk, to express milk in your workplace, and your employer must accommodate that need.
If you work in New York, or states like New York that have their own law every employer is covered, even if you are the only employee, and your employer must provide a clean private non-bathroom place for you to express milk, either on unpaid break time – reasonable periods – or on your own break, or lunch time for up to three years following the birth of your baby (in NY).
And if you work anywhere in the country, if your employer has at least 15 employees, you are entitled to express milk because lactation is a pregnancy-related condition. And if your employer does not permit you to do so in a clean, private, non-bathroom place, its sex and pregnancy discrimination. Period.*
*15 employees are required by the Pregnancy Discrimination Act and the federal sex discrimination law.