Customer Service Rep Asked for One Day Off for Pregnancy Symptoms — Her Employer Fired Her the Next Day, the EEOC Alleges

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A customer service representative in metro Atlanta says she wasn’t asking for anything complicated—just one day to deal with pregnancy-related symptoms. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission says that request set off a chain of events that ended with her being fired almost immediately.

In a federal lawsuit announced in the EEOC’s release, the agency alleges Guice Services, Inc., doing business as Rooter ProXpress, unlawfully terminated the worker because she was pregnant. The company provides plumbing services across the Atlanta metropolitan area.

A day off request turned into a termination

The EEOC says the employee was dealing with medical issues tied to her pregnancy, including high blood pressure, nausea, and round ligament pain. These aren’t abstract discomforts; they’re the kind of symptoms that can make it hard to sit through a shift, talk on the phone all day, or even safely get through a normal workday without rest or medical attention.

According to the lawsuit, in May 2024 the representative told her direct supervisor she needed to take the next day off to tend to her symptoms. On its face, it reads like a straightforward, human request: a worker flags a health issue and asks for a short break to get it under control.

The EEOC says the response from management was anything but routine. The next day, a Rooter ProXpress manager allegedly expressed a desire to “get rid of” the representative because she was “pregnant and having a baby.” The agency says the company fired her.

What the EEOC says was said behind the scenes

In workplace discrimination cases, a lot can come down to what was said in the moment and who heard it. The EEOC’s complaint points to the manager’s alleged statement—wanting to “get rid of” the worker because she was “pregnant and having a baby”—as the kind of blunt reasoning that employers usually know better than to put into words.

That detail matters because it frames the firing as a reaction to pregnancy itself, not performance, not attendance history, and not a neutral business reason. The lawsuit, as described by the EEOC, connects the timeline tightly: she asked for a day off due to pregnancy symptoms, and she was gone almost immediately after.

The agency’s regional attorney, Marcus G. Keegan, didn’t mince words in the announcement. “Firing an employee because she is pregnant is indefensible and unlawful,” he said, adding that federal law “plainly prohibits employers from firing employees because of their pregnancy.”

The legal hook: pregnancy is protected at work

The EEOC says this alleged firing violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as amended by the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978. The core idea is simple: discrimination “because of sex” includes discrimination based on pregnancy, childbirth, and related medical conditions.

That doesn’t mean employers can never fire a pregnant employee. It means they can’t do it because she’s pregnant, and they can’t treat pregnancy-related limitations as a reason to push someone out when they would handle other employees’ medical needs differently.

Darrell E. Graham, director of the EEOC’s Atlanta District, emphasized that point in the release: “Pregnancy is protected in the workplace by federal law. The EEOC is committed to robustly enforcing employees’ rights during pregnancy.”

Why the case ended up in federal court

The EEOC filed the case as EEOC v. Guice Services, Inc. d/b/a Rooter ProXpress, Case No. 1:26-cv-4040, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, Atlanta Division. That’s the step the agency takes when it believes there’s a legal violation and attempts to resolve it first don’t succeed.

In this instance, the EEOC says it tried to reach a pre-litigation settlement through its administrative conciliation process before suing. Conciliation is essentially the agency’s attempt to negotiate a fix—often involving policy changes, training, and monetary relief—without the expense and public fight of a courtroom case.

When conciliation doesn’t result in an agreement, the agency can move forward with litigation. That’s where this is now: a federal lawsuit, with the EEOC putting the company’s alleged decisions and internal reasoning under a microscope.

The stakes for workers are bigger than one company

For employees, the most immediate fear in a moment like this isn’t a courtroom battle years down the road—it’s rent, groceries, and health care. Being fired during pregnancy can set off a cascade: disrupted medical coverage, lost income right when expenses rise, and a scramble to find new work while dealing with symptoms that are already hard to manage.

The EEOC release doesn’t lay out what the representative did in the hours after she was fired, but the agency’s involvement signals the dispute moved into formal channels. Once a discrimination charge is filed and investigated, the process can become documentation-heavy—dates, communications with supervisors, and the employer’s stated reasons for termination all get examined.

That’s also why timing is so central here. The allegation is not just that she was fired while pregnant. It’s that she disclosed pregnancy-related medical conditions, requested a single day off to address them, and was then targeted with explicitly pregnancy-related remarks and terminated the next day.

What people tend to focus on in cases like this

The EEOC’s description highlights the kind of detail that often drives public reaction: the alleged quote. When a manager’s words appear to tie a firing directly to pregnancy—“pregnant and having a baby”—it’s the kind of thing that people immediately recognize as a red flag, even without knowing every policy detail inside the company.

In practical terms, what typically stands out to observers is how fast things moved. One day off requested; the next day a manager allegedly says they want her gone; then she’s fired. That sequence reads less like a carefully considered employment decision and more like a snap judgment triggered by pregnancy and the expectation of a coming leave or ongoing accommodations.

It also puts a spotlight on how pregnancy symptoms are treated at work. High blood pressure, nausea, and round ligament pain aren’t minor inconveniences for many pregnant people. The reason workers pay attention to stories like this is that they recognize the gap between what pregnancy can demand physically and how inflexible some workplaces can be when those realities show up on the schedule.

The lawsuit will now decide what can be proven, what the company’s defense is, and what remedies might be ordered if the EEOC prevails. But the alleged message behind the firing—pregnancy as a reason to “get rid of” someone—puts a blunt, uncomfortable question on the table: in 2024, was a one-day request for pregnancy symptoms enough to cost a worker her job?