February 2022: Minnesota Amends Lactation Breaks, Pregnancy Accommodations Provisions

Update Applicable to:
All employers in the state of Minnesota

What happened?
The state of Minnesota amended lactation breaks and merged pregnancy accommodations.

What are the details?
Lactation Breaks
Effective January 1, 2022, employers are required to provide employees who need to express breast milk for their infant child with reasonable break times each day. The amendment prohibits employers from reducing an employee’s compensation for time used for the purpose of expressing milk.

Additionally, the amendment limits an employer’s obligation to the 12 months following the child’s birth.

Pregnancy Accommodations
The amendment also merged the provisions governing lactation breaks and pregnancy accommodations into one section, Minnesota Statute Section 181.939. This means beginning January 1, 2022, employers with at least 15 employees (previously, 21 employees) are covered under the pregnancy accommodations provision.

Additionally, there is no longer any length of time or an average number of hours per week an employee must satisfy to qualify for the accommodation rights and protections under the statute.

For more information, please see the links below:

Minnesota Statute Section 181.939

Article 1 – Article 2

What do employers need to do?
Employers may want to review their policies and practices on lactation breaks to ensure that they are providing the paid break time required under Minnesota’s amended law.

Employers with between 15 and 20 employees might want to review their pregnancy accommodations policies to ensure that they are providing accommodations in compliance with the law, which now applies to them.