Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, DISCRIMINATION—PREGNANCY—N.D. Ill.: Amazon employee fired after requesting postpartum leave extension advances PWFA retaliation claim, (May 1, 2026)

By Kathleen Kapusta, J.D.

While it was not discriminatory under Title VII for Amazon to fire the employee based on HR’s assessment of her likelihood to return to work, that motivation is illegal under the PWFA, which grants childbirth-related leave protected status.

Although Amazon was entitled to summary judgment on the Title VII claim of a warehouse associate who had exhausted her postpartum leave and had failed to return work after the company denied her request for a leave extension, as well as her failure-to-accommodate claim under the Pregnant Worker Fairness Act (PWFA), the court allowed her PWFA retaliation claim to advance to trial. An HR representative’s alleged statement that she terminated the employee because she thought she was just there for the maternity benefits and was going to leave afterward, while not sufficient to imply sex discrimination, could, said the court, suffice to prove retaliation under the PWFA (Ivy v. Amazon.com Services, LLC, No. 24 CV 6028 (N.D. Ill. Apr. 30, 2026)).

When the employee began working at the Amazon warehouse in October 2023, she was seven months pregnant. Less than a month later, she took prepartum leave under Amazon’s leave program for new parents. After she gave birth to her son on December 1, she transitioned to 10 weeks of postpartum leave, which was set to expire on February 8.

Leave extension. Around the time of her scheduled return to work, the employee requested a leave extension for “Pregnancy/Childbirth” through February 22. Because she had exhausted her postpartum leave, Amazon said her request would be processed as a request for short-term disability and she needed to provide documentation from a healthcare provider regarding her health condition and treatment plan. In two separate emails outlining this information, Amazon provided the employee with two different deadlines for providing the documentation—February 27 and March 13.

On February 26, Amazon reminded the employee that she still needed to provide the documentation. In response, she sent an ultrasound and proof of delivery. On February 29, the company denied her extension request because she did not provide the required documentation. When the employee did not return to work on February 28, after the February 27 deadline had elapsed, she began to deplete the unpaid time (UPT) credits she had accrued.

Termination. Once her UPT balance fell below zero, an HR rep called the employee to again request the required documentation. During the call, the employee purportedly told the rep that she had a postpartum “high-risk” condition. She did not, however, provide any documentation. Although the rep had the discretion to credit additional UPT to the employee’s account, she instead fired her effective March 2, citing her negative UPT balance. The rep allegedly told the employee’s boyfriend, also an Amazon worker, that she fired the employee because she thought she was just there for the maternity benefits and was going to leave afterward.

Title VII discrimination. Amazon, in moving for summary judgment on the employee’s Title VII sex discrimination claim, argued that the employee did not meet its expectations when she failed to return to work following maternity leave. In response, the employee countered that the company discriminatorily enforced its attendance policy against her while providing discretionary UPT credits to others, including her boyfriend, who depleted their UPT balances.

While there was evidence indicating the HR rep had at times credited the employee’s boyfriend and his friend UPT over a period of multiple months, there was no suggestion she excused multiple days’ worth of absences at one time. The evidence also indicated that these absences were due to unforeseeable short-term emergencies such as car trouble and childcare issues, not medium- or long-term health issues necessitating weeks of absence, said the court, finding the employee failed to show her boyfriend and his friend were similarly situated comparators.

No evidence of pretext. Nor was she able to show that the reason for her termination—her negative UPT balance—was pretextual. Although the employee pointed to the March 13 deadline Amazon had provided in two emails requesting documentation, her UBT balance, said the court, “was undisputably negative in violation of Amazon’s attendance policy, and that is the single reason Amazon has consistently given for firing her.” Though the inclusion of the March 13 date was a mistake, the error was not material to Amazon’s stated reason for her termination.

As to the HR rep’s statement that she terminated the employee because she thought she was just there for the maternity benefits and was going to leave afterward, the court noted that it was neutral to the employee’s sex and postpartum status. Instead, it concerned the rep’s belief that the employee would leave the company after taking advantage of its employee benefits.

The HR rep, the court explained, never said she expected that the employee would not return because that is what she would expect a woman to do after giving birth. “Outwardly,” the court reasoned, her “sentiment could apply equally to an employee who leaves an employer shortly after taking advantage of a different kind of benefit, such as tuition reimbursement or student-loan forgiveness.”

The court acknowledged that it was possible to look past the facial meaning of the rep’s alleged statement and find it reflected a stereotypical belief about women who become mothers but, it stressed, a single piece of evidence is not enough to support a discrimination claim. “An employer’s facially neutral but arguably stereotypical motivation for terminating an employee is not sufficient to prove discriminatory intent; a plaintiff needs additional evidence to support the stereotypical inference.”

Further, said the court, the employee did not offer any evidence to show her sex was the true reason for the termination. Instead, the evidence indicated the HR rep did not harbor the stereotype that women are no longer suitable for the workforce after having a baby. Here, the court pointed out, once the employee’s leave lapsed, the HR rep contacted her repeatedly to encourage her to provide the documentation needed to extend her leave. Based on the evidence as a whole, the court granted summary judgment against her Title VII claim.

PWFA failure-to-accommodate claim. The employee next argued that Amazon failed to accommodate her pregnancy or childbirth-related condition as required by the PWFA, which provides that covered employers must accommodate workers’ conditions related to pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions unless the accommodation imposes an undue hardship on the business. Noting that Congress largely modeled the PWFA on the ADA and the PWFA directly invokes the ADA’s interactive process concept, the court turned to whether the employee participated in the interactive process such that a jury could find Amazon failed to accommodate her condition.

As part of the interactive process, said the court, an employer can require medical documentation corroborating an employee’s condition and its relation to pregnancy, childbirth, or a related condition. But here, the employee did not provide documentation of her health condition even though Amazon requested such documentation multiple times. While she said she was “high risk,” Amazon, the court stated, did not have to take her word for that.

As to the employee’s assertion the documentation Amazon requested was too onerous, the court agreed that a reasonable jury could find Amazon’s request for a treatment plan went beyond what the PWFA allows. She failed, however, to provide any documentation relating to her postpartum health condition or even any description of her condition beyond a vague suggestion. Nor did she request more time to gather documents, push back on the breadth of the company’s request, or express confusion about what it asked of her. Moreover, the documents she did provide—a confirmation of her pregnancy and of her son’s birth—did not suggest any medical condition that would have precluded her return to work. Accordingly, said the court, a reasonable jury could not hold Amazon liable for failure to accommodate her pregnancy-related condition because she did not engage in the interactive process.

PWFA retaliation. Turning finally to the employee’s PWFA retaliation claim, the court explained that the issue was whether she could show that Amazon discharged her because of her pre- and postnatal leave. And here, said the court, while the HR rep’s statement that she fired the employee because she thought she was just there for the maternity benefits and was going to leave afterward was not sufficient to imply sex discrimination, it could suffice to prove retaliation under the PWFA, which makes it illegal for covered employers to “take adverse action in terms, conditions, or privileges of employment against a qualified employee on account of the employee requesting or using a reasonable accommodation to the known limitations related to the pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions of the employee.”

“While it was not discriminatory under Title VII for [the HR rep] to fire [the employee] solely based on [the rep’s] assessment of [the employee’s] likelihood to return to work, that motivation is illegal under the PWFA, which grants childbirth-related leave protected status,” the court explained. And though the court noted that the out-of-court nature of the alleged statement raised an issue of credibility for a jury to resolve, it was disputed as to whether the rep actually made the statement to the employee’s boyfriend, and it would be up to a jury to decide whose version of the story to believe. Thus, the court denied summary judgment against this claim.

The case is No. 24 CV 6028.

Judge: Alexakis, G.

Attorneys: Nathan Charles Volheim (Sulaiman Law Group) for Janecia Ivy. Lindsey M. Hogan (Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath) for Amazon.com Services, LLC.

Companies: Amazon.com Services, LLC

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