Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, DISCRIMINATION—PREGNANCY—W.D. Wis.: Former municipal police officer's pregnancy discrimination, lactation, and GPS tracking claims rejected, (Jul 30, 2026)

By Wendy Biddle, J.D.

The officer’s supervisors were entitled to qualified immunity on Fourth Amendment claims over tracking an employer-owned vehicle.

A federal court in Wisconsin granted summary judgment to the City of Superior and four individual police supervisors, dismissing a former narcotics investigator's claims that she was discriminated against because of her pregnancy and maternity status. The former officer alleged that her supervisors engaged in a series of discriminatory acts, including derogatory comments, restrictive light-duty assignments, and heightened scrutiny of her timekeeping. She also alleged that the department failed to provide an adequate lactation space and that a GPS tracker installed on her unmarked police vehicle amid suspicions of time-reporting irregularities violated her Fourth Amendment rights. The court concluded that most of the challenged conduct was unrelated to the officer’ protected status, that the city satisfied its statutory lactation obligations, and that the defendants were entitled to qualified immunity because no clearly established law barred GPS monitoring of an employer-owned vehicle (LeRette v. City of Superior, No. 3:25-cv-00183-JDP (W.D. Wis. July 27, 2026)).

The plaintiff, a City of Superior police officer since 2013 who became a narcotics investigator in 2020, disclosed her first pregnancy to her supervisor in March 2022. After returning from maternity leave that November, the officer was placed on light duty and assigned to the property room, with restrictions barring her from carrying a firearm, driving a department vehicle, or leaving the station; an assignment she viewed as punitive. Around the same time, the officer raised concerns about finding a place to pump breast milk; she initially chose to use a locker-room shower stall but experienced repeated interruptions, and when she reported the problem, the police chief directed her to a private lactation room on the third floor, which she declined to use because she considered it too far from her desk.

GPS tracker. After returning to her narcotics role in 2023, the officer's supervisors grew suspicious that she was inaccurately reporting her work hours, leading them to require advance schedule submissions and to install a GPS tracker on her unmarked police vehicle after observing discrepancies between her reported hours and her whereabouts. The tracker remained in place for several weeks to months.

Resignation. Following a second pregnancy and maternity leave in 2024, a supervisor uncovered further discrepancies in the officer's timesheets, prompting an internal investigation into possible falsification. The officer was briefly placed on administrative leave and ultimately received a written warning in January 2025. She filed a rebuttal alleging discrimination, triggering an outside investigation, and resigned from the department in September 2025 while that investigation remained pending.

In January 2026, the outside investigators found insufficient evidence to substantiate either the falsification allegations against her or her discrimination claims against her supervisors. These events formed the basis of her lawsuit alleging equal protection, FLSA, and Fourth Amendment violations.

The city and the officer’s supervisors moved for summary judgment on all claims.

Preliminary evidentiary issues. Before reaching the merits, the court addressed two evidentiary disputes. It granted as unopposed the officer's motion to supplement her counsel's declaration with two late-filed exhibits. It then sustained numerous defense objections to the officer's proposed factual findings on foundation and hearsay grounds, excluding statements in her declaration that lacked personal-knowledge foundation and excluding coworker-relayed statements about her supervisors' comments as inadmissible hearsay, since Federal Rule of Evidence 801(d)(2)(D) applies only to statements made within the scope of an employee's job duties, not office gossip. Statements from internal and outside investigation materials were similarly excluded as hearsay.

Equal protection claims. The court applied the standard requiring evidence that defendants acted with discriminatory intent, either through an adverse employment action or through severe or pervasive harassment. Because the officer did not tie her claims to discrete adverse actions, the court analyzed her theory as a hostile work environment claim. It found that alleged derogatory comments, including a suggestion that the officer wear a "matron skirt," fell well short of the severity or pervasiveness required under Seventh Circuit precedent, which has excused far more offensive remarks. The court also found the comments too temporally remote from the challenged workplace actions to support an inference of discriminatory intent under the "stray remark" doctrine.

The officer also alleged that her property room assignment during light duty, restrictions on carrying a firearm or driving a city vehicle, a performance reprimand, and scrutiny of her time reporting were intended to discriminate against her based on her sex, pregnancy, and maternity status. The court found each was either standard practice applied to similarly situated employees regardless of sex or unsupported by adequate comparator evidence. The court emphasized that comparators must share the same supervisor and circumstances, a showing the former officer failed to make. It also rejected her argument that a supervisor's email response to an HR inquiry evidenced a cover-up, finding the email was factually accurate.

FLSA claim. The court held that the city satisfied 29 U.S.C. § 218d(a) by offering the former officer a private, shielded third-floor lactation room after she reported problems with her initially self-selected location in the women's locker room. The statute, the court explained, does not entitle employees to their preferred pumping location, only an adequate one.

Fourth Amendment claims. Finally, on the Fourth Amendment claims concerning the GPS tracker, the court determined that although United States v. Jones, 565 U.S. 400 (2012) and Carpenter v. United States, 585 U.S. 296 (2018), clearly establish a reasonable expectation of privacy against warrantless GPS tracking of personal vehicles and cellphone location data, that precedent does not clearly extend to employer-owned vehicles, where no physical trespass occurs and surveillance does not yield the same "all-encompassing record" of movement. Because the former officer identified no closely analogous case or general rule applying with obvious clarity to her circumstances, her supervisors were entitled to qualified immunity, without the court resolving whether a constitutional violation occurred.

The court therefore entered summary judgment for defendants on all claims.

The case is No. 3:25-cv-00183-JDP.

Judge: Peterson, J.

Attorneys: Jeff Scott Olson (Jeff Scott Olson Law Firm) for Mikayla Marie LeRette. Kiley B. Zellner (Crivello, Nichols & Hall) for The City of Superior, Wisconsin, Thomas Champaigne, John Kiel, Jeffrey Harriman, and Michelle Pope.

Companies: City of Superior, Wisconsin

Cases: PregnancyDiscrimination Discrimination PublicEmployees Procedure WisconsinNews