SCOTUS Declines to Hear Case on Breastfeeding in Workplace

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a case on sexual discrimination and breastfeeding in the work place at the beginning of February. This decision not to hear the case is essentially the Supreme Court agreeing with the trial court who dismissed the case on summary judgment. The final word? It was okay to fire a woman for breastfeeding. After years of legal battles, the mother, Angela Ames is out of appeals. Her one last attempt to petition was met with another dismissal. I am not sure why this surprised me—we should have all seen it coming, because breastfeeding is obviously not an act of care or nurturing for a child—it is something sexual, and therefore doesn’t have a place in the office.

This situation occurred in 2010 at a Nationwide Insurance office in Iowa. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, two months after being out for maternity leave Ames returned to work. Allegedly, that same day she approached her supervisor to ask for a space to pump milk. Despite having a designated lactation room at the offices, Ames was told that she needed to fill out paperwork and it would take several days of processing for the door to be opened for her use. Instead, she was sent to the nurse’s station, and told to wait there. Ames complained about the lack privacy, and now, in serious pain with swollen breasts, went back to her department head to ask again for help in getting the door to the lactation room open. And it was at this point that the most famous phrase associated with the case was uttered. Her department head looked at her and said, “Just go home to be with your babies.” It was then that Ames was told to sit down and her letter of resignation was dictated to her.

Ames took her case to the trial court under the statute for gender discrimination. This was promptly dismissed by summary judgment at the trial court level because it was discovered that in some cases, men are also capable of lactation, and therefore the gender issue is not valid. It as also concluded that because Ames didn’t put up enough of a fight internally before her resignation that she wasn’t actually “fired.”

It is unjust to treat new mothers in a way that makes them only mothers—for this strips them of their humanity and social importance in any other way. It is sad that we live in a society where women are still treated unfairly in the workplace because of their ability to give birth to children. By essentially demanding Ames’ resignation in a time of great distress and telling her to “just go home to your babies,” Ames was objectified and humiliated by her employer.

We often hear of the objectification of women through sexualization, such that they are objects of sexual pleasure. But this is not the same kind of situation. This is a scenario where a woman, with a career and a life outside of children, was objectified and stripped of any other social privilege and became only “a mother.”

Why do men feel threatened by breastfeeding in the workplace? Are they afraid they may be prompted by sexual desires because a woman is expressing milk from her breasts? This is a natural bodily function, and last I heard, employees weren’t worried about being laid-off for having to use the restroom during the workday. If both men and women can lactate, as explained by the court, then there should be easily accessed accommodations available for both genders in the workplace.

Where the court is wrong is judging male lactation and female lactation to be associated with the same scenarios. For Ames, this was not a case of medically induced lactation or the cause of some abnormality—this was directly related to her motherhood and the nourishment of her newly born child. Until lactation is no longer linked almost entirely with breastfeeding a baby, pumping milk is a women’s issue, not one associated with men. The firing of women for lactating and needing accommodations associated with that needs to be made illegal, for we don’t need another reason to okay their expulsion from society and the workforce. We need these mothers on our side.