FILE - Cars line the parking lot of Gateway’s Fred Meyer in East Portland, Ore., July 31, 2025.
Morgan Barnaby / OPB
When Samantha Pennington was about three months pregnant in July 2023, she met with her manager and a human resources representative at the Fred Meyer store in Vancouver, Washington, where she worked.
Pennington was given a warning for previously missing shifts, which she explained was due to pregnancy. She offered to get a note from her doctor, but her manager told her “not to bother.”
That’s according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against the Portland-based grocery subsidiary Fred Meyer. The suit filed in U.S. District Court in Tacoma alleges discrimination against two pregnant employees at its Vancouver store in 2023.
Pennington — the only named party in the lawsuit — still provided medical documentation to her manager in August. By that point she had also asked to move positions at the store so she could more readily access the restroom. Pennington was denied.
In October 2023, Pennington put in a request to take time off for childbirth. Later that same day, she was fired.
The EEOC suit comes as federal agencies face scrutiny for pursuing actions consistent with President Trump’s political priorities. But the EEOC’s close observers say this suit against Fred Meyer appears to be consistent with the agency’s core mission rather than partisan politics.
The prevailing federal law over situations like these is the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, which took effect in June 2023. It requires employers to make reasonable accommodations for limitations due to pregnancy and childbirth, and it guarantees that a worker cannot be fired due to pregnancy.
A second Fred Meyer employee had a similar experience that year working at the same store as Pennington. That pregnant worker is unnamed in the lawsuit and referred to as “class member.”
EEOC lawyers wrote in the lawsuit that Fred Meyer violated the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act when the store failed to provide both women with “reasonable accommodations for pregnancy.”
Additionally, the store “took adverse action — including termination — against both women on account of their requests for reasonable accommodation and in retaliation for their protected conduct under the statute.”
A Fred Meyer spokesperson told OPB in an email the Kroger subsidiary does not comment on active litigation.
It is somewhat rare for the EEOC to sue a company. The typical process often starts with a complaint from an employee to the federal agency. If the complaint is credible and falls under the EEOC’s purview, it will investigate.
But the EEOC is not a court. If EEOC investigators believe the employee’s case is legitimate, the agency will give the employee a letter that grants them the ability to pursue legal action. But the worker has to take it from there.
Out of the thousands of cases a year, however, the EEOC will take around 150 to court, according to former EEOC Commissioner Chai Feldblum.
“EEOC will do that either if they think there’s a situation of systemic discrimination,” Feldblum, who served from 2010 to 2018, told OPB, “or the discrimination was particularly egregious, or the case involves an area where the EEOC has made it a priority.”
In the lawsuit, the EEOC demands the store change its policies moving forward. The EEOC is asking for a jury trial to, among other things, determine if damages are owed to the former workers.
Feldblum said the Fred Meyer case comes at a tumultuous time for the EEOC.
In addition to being a former commissioner, Feldblum is also the leader of a nonprofit called Equal Employment Opportunity Leaders. It’s made up of former commissioners and other federal officials who are concerned partisanship is tainting the work of the EEOC.
President Donald Trump appointed Andrea Lucas chair of the EEOC last November. Feldblum and other former commissioners say Lucas has chosen to use the agency’s dwindling resources to pursue politically motivated cases.
One example is a lawsuit against Oregon-based shoemaker Nike for allegedly discriminating against white male employees in the company’s efforts to create diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, programs. President Trump has continually spoken against DEI and issued an anti-DEI executive order shortly after taking office.
With respect to the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, Lucas has criticized the law for being interpreted too broadly to include protections for workers obtaining or recovering from abortion. Under her leadership, the interpretation has been narrowed, but Lucas said protecting workers during pregnancy is a key priority.
While Feldblum worries that some EEOC lawsuits being pursued under Lucas are politically motivated, the case against Fred Meyer is not one of them.
“The EEOC should be focusing on where the most extensive and extreme discrimination is happening,” Feldblum said. “And this Fred Meyer case is a good example.”
