By: Lauren Smith

The Providing Urgent Maternal Protections for Nursing Mothers (“PUMP”) Act requires employers to accommodate employees who express breast milk by providing them with reasonable break time and an appropriate “place, other than a bathroom, that is shielded from view and free from intrusion from coworkers and the public.”[1]  Recent litigation suggests that PUMP Act plaintiffs have achieved favorable outcomes at a higher rate than plaintiffs pursuing claims under other employment statutes.[2] According to data collected by United States District Courts, plaintiffs survive the motion to dismiss stage in less than 2% of employment law cases.[3] In over a dozen PUMP Act cases, nearly half of plaintiffs survived early dispositive motions or otherwise secured favorable outcomes, marking these cases as clear outliers.[4]

Liz Morris, co-director of the Center for WorkLife Law at the University of California San Francisco, says “at least some employers are failing to settle prior to litigation because they and their lawyers are not accurately evaluating the strength of these lactation claims.”[5] The success of these recent cases can aid companies and counsel to evaluate the strength of future PUMP Act claims more accurately. More importantly, these decisions elucidate what strict compliance with the PUMP Act actually looks like for employers.

The PUMP Act requires employers to provide nursing employees with a private place to express breast milk.[6]  Private constitutes a nursing space “shielded from view and free from intrusion from coworkers and the public.”[7] Shielded from view includes protection not just from people but also from digital monitoring.[8] Still, privacy alone is insufficient; the space must also be accessible.[9] To be accessible, the space “must be available when needed by the employee.”[10] This means the employee should be able to access the space without barriers like requesting a key or needing to make a reservation to receive the privacy necessitated in the statute.[11] The space must also be adequate for its purposes and sanitary.[12] Adequacy requires functionality; the space must be equipped with basic necessary features to permit effective expression of breast milk.[13] Although there is no definitive checklist, one court deemed a space inadequate because it lacked furniture for the employee to sit on while pumping.[14] Other considerations could include an outlet to plug equipment into and a cool place for storing breast milk.[15]

Many compliance challenges arise when nursing employees work in non-office settings or in male-dominated fields.[16] On some job sites, particularly those outside traditional office settings, finding a private space or getting regular break times is much harder.[17] For example, a police officer can’t know when they will be called to duty, and someone working in an airport or on planes may not have access to designated pumping spaces.[18] Moreover, in male-dominated industries, supervisors and managers may have less experience accommodating employees who breastfeed.[19] These cases may require more creative solutions and accommodations, but the employer’s statutory obligation remains.

One employment law attorney, Christine Bestor Townsend, advises employers in industries that require more creative compliance solutions.[20] She says some of those solutions may include bringing trailers and pop-up tents to outdoor work sites or providing battery-operated pumps on job sites where there is no electricity.[21] For jobs that are not conducive to regular, scheduled break times, the employer and employee should agree to sporadic breaks when the employee needs to pump.[22]

For managers and supervisors in male-dominated fields, it is important to assess compliance even before a request is made.[23] Townsend advises her clients to draft policies preemptively and be prepared for when accommodations are needed.[24] Townsend advises employers to “[h]ave solutions in advance … so the first time an employee comes to you and says [they] need[] these breaks and space to pump, it’s not this entirely new thing that you have to go on the fly to figure out.”[25] These practices are crucial to legal compliance and important for employees’ accessibility in male-dominated fields.

Recent decisions in PUMP Act cases demonstrate that courts are closely scrutinizing employer compliance with the statute.[26] These decisions illustrate that strict compliance means more than providing a space.[27] That space must be private, accessible, adequate, and sanitary.[28] Employers should take this opportunity to assess their own compliance and proactively ensure accommodations are available when they are needed.[29] Doing so can help avoid costly litigation and, more importantly, ensure that employees receive the protections they are entitled to under federal law.

 

[1] Providing Urgent Maternal Protections for Nursing Mothers Act, 29 U.S.C. § 218d.

[2] Compare Maia Pandey, Breastfeeding Workers See Early Success in PUMP Act Lawsuits (1), Bloomberg L. (Aug. 31, 2026, at 13:53 ET), https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/breastfeeding-workers-see-early-success-in-pump-act-lawsuits?taid= (on file with the American University Business Law Review) (explaining recent successes for plaintiffs in PUMP Act cases), with Table C-4—U.S. District Courts–Civil Statistical Tables For The Federal Judiciary (June 30, 2026), U.S. Courts (June 30, 2026) [hereinafter Civil Statistical Tables for the Federal Judiciary], https://www.uscourts.gov/data-news/data-tables/2026/06/30/statistical-tables-federal-judiciary/c-4 [https://perma.cc/4V64-72ZD] (showing plaintiffs succeed in less than 2% of employment law cases).

[3] See Civil Statistical Tables for the Federal Judiciary, supra note 2.

[4] See Pandey, supra note 2 (including negotiated settlements and a jury verdict in favor of the plaintiff).

[5] Id.

[6] 29 U.S.C. § 218d; see also Forbes v. BG3 Cap. Grp., LLC, No. 23-cv-00418-SH, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 141449, at *4, *13–14 (N.D. Okla. Aug. 8, 2024) (concluding, at the pleading stage, that allegations of coworker access could violate the PUMP Act’s “free from intrusion” requirement).

[7] 29 U.S.C. § 218d(a)(2); Forbes, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 141449, at *4.

[8] See Forbes, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 141449, at *8–9, *14 (reasoning that security-camera monitoring could render a pumping space not free from intrusion).

[9] See Cruz v. Port Auth. of N.Y. & N.J., No. 24-6938 (JXN)(AME), 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 163345, at *10 (D.N.J. July 23, 2026); see also Fact Sheet #73: FLSA Protections for Employees to Pump Breast Milk at Work, U.S. Dep’t Lab. (Dec. 2025) [hereinafter Fact Sheet #73], https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/73-flsa-break-time-nursing-mothers [https://perma.cc/4NB4-L2FT] (explaining that the space “must be available when needed by the employee in order to meet the statutory requirement.”).

[10] Fact Sheet #73, supra note 9.

[11] Cruz, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 163345, at *10 (denying Defendant’s motion for summary judgment where Plaintiff could only access the nursing room with a key that she had to ask for repeatedly).

[12] Thomas v. Montgomery Cnty., No. 8:25-cv-03672-PX, 2026 LEXIS 160772, at *3–4, *22–23 (D. Md. July 21, 2026) (denying Defendant’s motion for summary judgment because the room provided to Plaintiff had no furniture for her to sit while pumping and also stored a partially opened bucket that had a warning label which read: “Danger Contains Crystalline Silica: May cause cancer (Inhalation); may cause damage to organs (liver, kidneys, respiratory system/digestive system) through prolonged or repeated exposure (Inhalation).”).

[13] See id.

[14] See id. at *15.

[15] See Ali v. Sun Country Airlines: Breastfeeding Discrimination, Gender Just., https://www.genderjustice.us/work/ali-v-sun-country-airlines/ [https://perma.cc/CL77-ML9H] (last visited Sep. 12, 2026) (describing a settlement reached in a case involving an employee who was not provided with a cool place to store breastmilk at a safe temperature which demonstrated the need for access to outlets and refrigeration).

[16] Pandey, supra note 2 (detailing cases involving non-office settings, such as cashiers or restaurant employees and traditionally male-dominated professions, such as maintenance workers and police officers).

[17] See id.

[18] See id.; Gender Just., supra note 15 (telling the story of an airport worker who was forced to go through TSA security every time she had to breastfeed);

[19] Pandey, supra note 2 (citing interviews with management and worker-side attorneys).

[20] See id.

[21] See id.

[22] Fact Sheet #73, supra note 9 (requiring reasonable break time to express milk).

[23] Pandey, supra note 2.

[24] See id.

[25] Id.

[26] See Cruz v. Port Auth. of N.Y. & N.J., No. 24-6938 (JXN)(AME), 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 163345, at *11–13 (D.N.J. July 23, 2026); Forbes v. BG3 Capital Grp., LLC, No. 23-cv-00418-SH, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 141449, at *14 (N.D. Okla. Aug. 8, 2024); Thomas v. Montgomery Cnty., No. 8:25-cv-03672-PX, 2026 LEXIS 160772, at *15 (D. Md. July 21, 2026).

[27] Cruz, 2026 LEXIS 163345, at *10–11; Forbes, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 141449, at *2; Thomas, 2026 LEXIS 160772, at *15.

[28] Cruz, 2026 LEXIS 163345, at *10–11; Forbes, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 141449, at *2; Thomas, 2026 LEXIS 160772, at *15.

[29] See Pandey, supra note 2.