By Jack Tuckner, Esq.
Finally!
For two years I’ve been telling you, in my newsletter and from every social media platform, podcast and stage that would have me, that federal menopause protection at work was coming.
Today it’s here, and I was proud to have helped draft it, alongside Karen Giblin, who presented our proposal to Congress in July 2024, with medical guidance from Corrado Altomare, MD, FACOG. Now it’s a formal bill: Congresswoman Debbie Dingell and Yvette D. Clarke have introduced the Menopausal Workers’ Fairness Act of 2025.
Here’s what it’s for, in the bill’s own words: expanding access to reasonable accommodations for menopause symptoms so women can keep doing their jobs without risking their health or their paycheck. For years I’ve helped women patch these claims together through age, sex, and disability laws, none of it specifically built for the purpose. The bill’s own findings admit as much. The protection was technically there, just never by name, so the cases stayed rare and most women never knew it existed.
What the bill would do:
• Create a right to reasonable accommodations for menopause-related limitations, modeled on the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, and bars punishing a woman for requesting one
• Stop any employer from forcing a woman onto leave or into an accommodation she didn’t choose
• Keep her menopause-related medical information confidential
• Direct the EEOC to give employers concrete examples, so nobody is left guessing
When Rep. Dingell’s office asked me to speak to it for the announcement, here’s what I said:
“Menopause has never been a protected category of its own, so for years women have had to force these claims through age, sex, and disability law, none of it built for that purpose. That’s why these cases have been few and far between, and why almost no one knows the protection is even there. The Menopausal Workers’ Fairness Act finally names menopause directly, in plain statutory language, and turns a right that was technically available but practically out of reach into one a woman can actually use, in the same way that the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act did for pregnancy.”
For two years I said it was coming. Here it is. A right you can’t use isn’t much of a right, and this bill makes it usable.
None of this happens alone. I’m grateful to the researchers, clinicians, advocates and educators who’ve carried menopause into the workplace conversation for years, including Karen Giblin, April Haberman WHC, the Menopause Education Center, The Menopause Society, Society for Women’s Health Research (SWHR), Claire Gill, Michelle Saba Corpuz and Rachel Anne. I’m certainly leaving out names I shouldn’t, so consider this a standing thank-you to everyone who’s moved this forward. Tag someone below who belongs here.
The press release can be accessed here and full bill text can be found here. Read it, share it, and tell every woman you know it exists.