Assembly Worker Took Approved Leave for Pregnancy Complications — Her Employer Counted the Absences Against Her Under the Attendance Policy and Fired Her

Photo credit: AI-generated image created using ChatGPT. Illustrative only.

An assembly line job doesn’t leave much room for being anything less than fully physical. You’re standing, lifting, moving fast, and keeping pace with the people next to you. For one worker at Step2 Company’s Perrysville, Ohio facility, pregnancy complications and chronic mental health conditions meant she needed basic flexibility to keep doing the work—and she says the company turned those medically necessary limits into attendance “points” that ultimately cost her the job.

That’s the picture painted in the EEOC’s announcement of its lawsuit against Step2 Company, LLC, a toy and plastic products manufacturer with plants in Northern Ohio. The federal agency says the company failed to provide reasonable accommodations and then fired the worker in July 2024 after penalizing her for absences tied to pregnancy-related medical conditions and approved leave for chronic mental health conditions.

Absences that were medical turned into discipline anyway

At the heart of the case is something most hourly workers recognize instantly: the attendance policy that doesn’t care why you’re out. The EEOC alleges Step2 disciplined the employee under its attendance policy when she was absent due to pregnancy-related medical conditions. It also alleges the company counted against her absences connected to approved leave for chronic mental health conditions.

In other words, the suit describes a worker who wasn’t just missing work casually—she had health-related reasons and, in at least one category, leave that had been approved. The EEOC says Step2 should have accommodated those limitations instead of treating them as ordinary attendance violations.

Employers can have attendance rules, but the EEOC’s point here is that those rules can’t be used as a blunt instrument when federal accommodation laws are involved. The alleged result was predictable: once the absences were recorded as policy violations, discipline stacked up.

What she asked for sounds like the kind of tweaks factories make every day

The lawsuit doesn’t describe a request to be excused from the job altogether. It describes the kinds of adjustments that often keep a worker on the line. The EEOC says the employee asked to sit down briefly between assemblies, take more frequent breaks, and avoid working on “highly physically strenuous assemblies” because of her pregnancy or related medical conditions.

Those requests matter because they show the worker wasn’t just saying, “I can’t.” She was saying, “Here’s how I can keep going.” In a manufacturing environment, rotating tasks, allowing intermittent sitting, and adjusting break timing are the kinds of changes that can be simple—or can become a fight—depending on how rigid management chooses to be.

The EEOC alleges Step2 denied those requests. And, crucially, it claims the company also failed to accommodate her by excusing pregnancy- and disability-related absences. That’s where the attendance policy, which often seems like a neutral set of rules on paper, becomes the lever that can push someone out.

The escalation: requests for help became the trigger for retaliation, the EEOC says

The agency isn’t only alleging that Step2 refused accommodations. It’s also accusing the company of punishing the worker for asking. The EEOC says Step2 retaliated against the employee for requesting accommodations, interfered with her ability to further seek reasonable accommodations, and then terminated her employment.

Retaliation claims tend to hinge on how a workplace responds after an employee raises a need: Do supervisors become harsher? Do write-ups suddenly appear? Does the employee get frozen out of the process that’s supposed to address the request? The EEOC’s description frames it as a progression—from asking for adjustments, to being blocked, to being disciplined, to being fired.

The firing date is specific: July 2024. The lawsuit itself was filed later, after the EEOC says it tried to resolve the matter through its administrative conciliation process and could not reach a settlement.

Why the EEOC is leaning on multiple federal laws here

This case pulls together several overlapping protections. The EEOC says Step2’s alleged conduct violates the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA) and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). It also says the conduct violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits sex discrimination, including discrimination based on pregnancy, childbirth, or pregnancy-related medical conditions.

The PWFA is a newer law, and the EEOC highlights that it went into effect on June 27, 2023. The core idea is straightforward: if a worker has known limitations related to pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions, the employer must provide reasonable accommodations unless doing so would create an undue hardship.

The ADA has similar reasonable-accommodation requirements for disabilities, again with the “undue hardship” boundary. The EEOC’s lawsuit frames Step2’s attendance policy as the wrong tool used the wrong way—denying accommodations and then using the very policy the worker needed flexibility from as the basis to end her employment.

EEOC Regional Attorney Debra M. Lawrence put it plainly in the agency’s statement: “An employer cannot illegitimately deny an employee reasonable accommodations to a general attendance policy and then use the policy to fire her.”

What people tend to focus on in cases like this: paperwork, points, and the “approved leave” issue

The EEOC press release doesn’t include public comments, but the pressure points are familiar to anyone who has dealt with leave forms and HR portals. When a worker has “approved leave” and still gets penalized, that’s typically where other employees start asking questions—because it suggests either the approval was hollow, or the system wasn’t honoring it.

And with attendance policies that operate on automatic discipline—points, occurrences, corrective action steps—everything often comes down to documentation and how the employer coded each absence. Was it recorded as protected leave? Was it treated as a no-fault occurrence anyway? Was the employee told one thing by a supervisor and another by HR?

The EEOC’s allegations also touch another common flashpoint: whether the worker was allowed to keep engaging in the accommodation process, or whether the employer “interfered” with her ability to seek accommodations. In real workplaces, interference can look like unanswered emails, meetings that never happen, and shifting requirements that keep the employee stuck in limbo until discipline catches up.

Where it stands now, and what comes next

The EEOC filed the case—EEOC v. Step2 Company, LLC, Case No. 1:26-cv-01562—in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio. The agency says the lawsuit was initiated by its Cleveland Field Office, which is part of the EEOC’s Philadelphia District Office.

Step2 has not been quoted in the EEOC’s announcement, and the press release does not describe the company’s response to the allegations. What’s clear from the filing is what the EEOC is trying to prove: that a pregnant worker with medical limitations requested reasonable adjustments, that those requests were denied, that medically related absences were treated as punishable attendance violations, and that the discipline ended with termination.

For workers watching similar policies at their own jobs, the details land in a familiar place: attendance rules feel absolute—until a medical issue makes them impossible to meet. This lawsuit is the federal government arguing that, in this case, the employer was required to bend rather than break the worker’s livelihood.