Fired while pregnant

[Kriz]

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? Oklahoma
Previous to my termination I had received excellent performance ratings. 5 months into my pregnancy I was terminated. What do I have to prove? How long after my termination do I have to file a lawsuit?

 

[Ohiogal]

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? Oklahoma
Previous to my termination I had received excellent performance ratings. 5 months into my pregnancy I was terminated. What do I have to prove? How long after my termination do I have to file a lawsuit?

Why were you terminated?

 

[ecmst12]

You can be fired while pregnant, or laid off. You can't be fired BECAUSE you are pregnant. File for unemployment. If you have a reason to believe that you were fired BECAUSE of the pregnancy, besides just the fact that you happen to be pregnant and you were fired, you can file a complaint with the EEOC. But file for unemployment first.

 

[cbg]

Before you can file a lawsuit you need a right to sue letter from the EEOC or your state equivalent. If you file on Monday you MAY have your letter in six months or so. If you're lucky and if they don't have a huge backlog of cases right now. So by all means file for unemployment.

To successfully sue you will need to show that you would not have been fired if you were not pregnant. We do not have even remotely enough information to say if this is true or not.

As indicated above, you cannot be fired BECAUSE you are pregnant. However, you can quite legally be fired despite being pregnant if:

1.) Your performance suffers, EVEN IF it suffers for factors related to your pregnancy and if any other employee would also be fired in the same circumstances
2.) You miss too much work for non-FMLA related reasons, EVEN IF those absences are related to your pregnancy and a non-pregnant employee who missed the same amount of work would also be fired
3.) You are fired for a policy violation or other misconduct reason that another, non-pregnant employee would also be fired for
4.) There is a reorganization or RIF and the company can make the case that you would have been RIFed or your position eliminated regardless of whether you were pregnant or not
5.) Pretty much any other reason unrelated to your pregnancy for which any other employee would also be fired.

Being pregnant does not make you bullet proof.

FYI - while you cannot file a lawsuit without a right to sue letter, receiving a right to sue letter does not mean you have a viable claim.

 

[commentator]

And when you file for unemployment insurance, be sure that you do not try to say you are not able and available and actively seeking work because of your pregnancy. Make your appropriate job searches and fulfill all conditions of work registration.

What you will get (probably) from your employer when you file for unemployment is quite a bit more information about why you were terminated. If you were terminated, say for "poor job performance" the unemployment system will contact them, and they'd have to show documentation of how you were informed your job performance was not up to par and that you were giving warnings and an opportunity to improve this performance, and that you deliberately chose not to. This information would help quite a bit with the EEOC complaint you might or might not decide to file. As someone pointed out, if you filed it Monday, you'd be lucky to hear from them within six months.

Unemployment insurance and EEOC are not related. But any time you are terminated, you need to file for unemployment at once, so you can determine exactly what the employer is claiming as the reason you were terminated, and you get to see if they have documentation of this, or whether they really did terminate you solely because you were pregnant. If they can't show they had a good misconduct reason to terminate you, then you will likely be approved for unemployment benefits which you can draw while you are able available and actively seeking other work throughout your pregnancy and beyond if you haven't found a job.