New Jersey Sues Amazon, Alleging Discrimination Against Pregnant and Disabled Warehouse Workers

New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin filed a lawsuit on Wednesday in Essex County Superior Court alleging that Amazon has violated state anti-discrimination law by how it handles accommodation requests from pregnant employees and workers with disabilities at multiple facilities across the state. The complaint follows a multi-year probe by the attorney general’s civil rights division into the company’s treatment of frontline staff in New Jersey warehouses.

According to the filing, the investigation identified a pattern dating back to October 2015 in which Amazon allegedly placed workers on unpaid leave after they sought accommodations, denied requests for reasonable adjustments, and subjected employees to unreasonable delays when processing accommodation applications. The suit further contends that the company retaliated against some workers who asked for accommodations, including terminating their employment, and in some instances fired employees after accommodations were granted on the grounds that they failed to meet the company’s stringent productivity standards.

“There is no excuse for Amazon’s shameful treatment of pregnant workers and workers with disabilities,” Platkin said in a statement, adding that the conduct has inflicted “enormous damage” on those employees and must cease. Amazon spokesman Kelly Nantel rejected the allegations, calling claims that the company fails to comply with federal and state law “simply not true,” and stressing that the firm’s priority is the health and well-being of its workforce. The company said it approves more than 99% of pregnancy accommodation requests and denied that it automatically places pregnant employees on leave or unjustifiably rejects accommodation petitions.

The complaint seeks unnamed compensatory damages and civil penalties, and asks the court to require Amazon to revise its policies, submit to monitoring and provide periodic reports for five years, among other remedies. It recounts multiple individual incidents. In one example, a pregnant worker received an accommodation permitting extra breaks and a restriction on lifting items heavier than 15 pounds, yet was reportedly terminated less than a month later for “not meeting packing numbers,” even though the accommodation reduced her expected packing quota. In another case, an employee’s accommodation request was closed for allegedly missing medical paperwork that was not required; while the worker attempted to refile, she received a series of warnings for poor productivity and was ultimately fired for “not making rate.” The lawsuit notes that Amazon’s internal review of that case did not confirm the termination was pregnancy-related, and the company later reinstated the employee with back pay.

Amazon told regulators and the public that it does not operate with fixed quotas and that performance is assessed against standards the company describes as safe and achievable, taking into account factors such as tenure, peer benchmarks and adherence to safety practices. The lawsuit asserts, however, that the company’s practices and systemic failures to provide accommodations have the effect of pushing pregnant workers and employees with disabilities out of its workforce, undermining the protections intended by New Jersey’s Law Against Discrimination.

The complaint adds to a string of scrutiny of Amazon’s treatment of pregnant warehouse workers. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission opened an inquiry last year after six U.S. senators pressed the agency to investigate an apparent pattern of mistreatment, and New York’s Division of Human Rights filed a related complaint in 2022. The company, the nation’s second-largest private employer, has previously faced litigation alleging that it failed to accommodate pregnant workers and then dismissed them for poor performance.

Plaintiffs and regulators will now seek judicial remedies through the New Jersey court system as the case moves forward.