DENVER – The American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado and the ACLU Women’s Rights Project filed a lawsuit yesterday on behalf of Ashley Provino, a Grand Junction woman who was fired from her job, in violation of state and federal anti-discrimination laws, for asserting her right to pump breast milk at work.

Provino, a new mother, requested permission from her employer, Big League Haircuts, to take a short break every four hours in the back room of the hair salon to express breast milk, as is her right under state and federal law.  The company denied Provino’s request and cut her hours dramatically.  When Provino requested to be returned to a full-time schedule with breaks so she could pump breast milk and continue breastfeeding her child, she was fired.

“Colorado law ensures that no mother is forced to choose between breastfeeding her baby and keeping her job,” said ACLU of Colorado Staff Attorney Rebecca T. Wallace.  “Employers should have no say in a mother’s personal family decision of whether to breastfeed her baby.”

Colorado’s Workplace Accommodations for Nursing Mothers Act, passed by the state legislature in 2008, unequivocally recognizes the societal and health benefits of breastfeeding and requires that employers make reasonable accommodations to allow new mothers to express milk at work. The ACLU complaint invokes the 2008 statute, as well as federal laws that require workplace accommodations for nursing mothers and prohibit sex discrimination, pregnancy discrimination and retaliation for protesting such discrimination.

“Discrimination against breastfeeding mothers in the workplace is not only illegal, it is also bad for Colorado families and businesses, because it forces women out of the workplace,” said ACLU of Colorado cooperating attorney Paula Greisen of King Greisen LLP.

Women who breastfeed must pump milk regularly throughout the day to ensure that they will keep lactating. A broad consensus exists among medical and public health experts that breastfeeding is optimal for infants following birth, and that breastfeeding has broad developmental, psychological, social, economic and environmental benefits.

In September 2012, the ACLU of Colorado and the ACLU Women’s Rights Project successfully negotiated a settlement with a Jefferson County charter school on behalf of Heather Burgbacher, a teacher who lost her job after she requested accommodations to express breast milk at work. 

The ACLU of Colorado also worked with DISH Network earlier this year to vastly improve accommodations for nursing mothers at the company’s corporate headquarters in Englewood following complaints from employees that the conditions provided by the company lacked adequate space and privacy.

more on this case

I support and volunteer with the ACLU of Colorado because there is no better way to ensure social justice than by working within the ACLU to protect, defend, and extend the civil rights and civil liberties of all people.
The ACLU does its work through litigation, education, and legislation, never forgetting the Constitution and Bill of Rights are not just words, but values to live by.  I share in the vow to defend these values.
How could you not be drawn to an organization that works with the sole intent to reverse fundamental wrongs?
Juveniles (2005) and persons diagnosed with mental disabilities (2001) subjected to capital punishment? The ACLU reversed those laws.
Same sex couples (2003) and interracial couples (1967) prosecuted for private acts of intimacy? The ACLU reversed those laws too.
In 2013, when a residential treatment center forced children, many with developmental and mental disabilities, into solitary confinement in the name of therapy, the ACLU of Colorado stopped them.

In 2014, after a long history of courts throwing people in jail because they could not afford to pay fines and fees, the ACLU helped pass a bill to stop this medieval practice.

My donation helps the ACLU and its many civil rights campaigns, including:

• The Campaign to End Mass Incarceration, a broad coalition effort to address systemic problems with our state’s criminal justice system.

• To help create the legal, legislative, and community environments where police brutality is never tolerated.

• To end solitary confinement for inmates with mental illness.

• To secure, once and for all times, reproductive freedom for men and women by keeping government out of our bedrooms!

We know no battle for our civil rights and liberties remains won forever.  So, we need the help of many. And, today I encourage you to help.
I hope you will join me in supporting the ACLU of Colorado on Colorado Gives Day.
Kathleen Hynes is a volunteer speaker for the ACLU of Colorado's Speakers Bureau. For more information about the Speakers Bureau and/or to book a speaking engagement, please visit the Speakers Bureau page.

(This blog post was featured on HuffingtonPost.com November 27)

Now is the time of year when poverty and homelessness are most prominent on the minds of many Americans. As families gather to eat together and give thanks for their lives, many of us also take time to think about the struggles of people who are less fortunate.
Less often do we think or even know about the extreme measures that are used by local lawmakers and police to criminalize the existence of people who are homeless and to target, harass, and drive people living in extreme poverty out of their communities.
What would you do if you were suddenly homeless, with no money and no place to go? It's not an abstract question for many American families, nearly half of which lack the assets to avoid severe poverty and possible homelessness if they were to face a crisis such as loss of a job, high medical bills, domestic violence, divorce, or the onset of mental illness.
Perhaps you would seek a homeless shelter, if you could manage transportation to get there. But what if there were no more beds, as is often the case in many communities? If you were lucky enough to own a sleeping bag, you might try to find a safe spot to sleep. That's exactly what ACLU client David Madison did when the shelters in Boulder, Colorado, turned him away on a November evening in 2009, but he was charged with violating a camping ordinance that prohibited sleeping outside with shelter. With the temperature dropping to 11 degrees, he could have legally slept outside in only his clothes, but a blanket or sleeping bag counted as "shelter" and made him a criminal.
Communities in Colorado and around the nation have passed a wave of new laws and ramped up enforcement of old ones targeting people who are homeless, from bans on sleeping in cars or taking shelter in bus stations to laws that prohibit sitting or lying down in public areas to restrictions on when and where someone can peacefully ask for charity. Less than a month ago, two ministers and a 90-year-old man werearrested in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, for giving food to homeless people in violation of a food-sharing ordinance. Bans on outdoor smoking are disproportionately enforcedagainst people who are homeless, and trends toward fewer public facilities or restrooms make public urination difficult, leading to arrests that can put someone on a sex offender list simply because nature called and there was nowhere to go.
Many ordinances have nothing to do with any conduct but make it a crime merely to exist in the wrong place or time, such as vagrancy, loitering, curfew, park hour limitation or trespass laws. A new "geographic restriction" program in Colorado Springs would ban some individuals from downtown areas altogether. The program is supposedly aimed only at repeat criminal offenders, but the most frequent citations that could lead to banishment are all minor nonviolent offenses or time-and-place violations.
These measures go far beyond valid restrictions on aggressive panhandling or genuinely criminal behavior. Some are unconstitutional under the First Amendment, and some are simply cruel, criminalizing the mere existence of homeless men, women and children. Their goal is simply to drive people who are homeless out of a community or neighborhood and into a different one. They do nothing to address the actual causes of homelessness but just try to hide it from sight or drive it somewhere else.
Many of us feel discomfort walking or driving past people who are homeless, even in situations where there is no safety risk at all, since seeing homeless people reminds us of the problem and makes us think about whether or how we will respond. Perhaps that isn't all bad. What if you were the homeless one and your community only gave you the choice of jail and a criminal record, fines you couldn't afford, or fleeing to another community that also only wanted you to leave?
Aggressive policing, enforcement, and jailing for these offenses also cost money. That money would be better spent addressing the causes of homelessness, whether through adequately paying work, affordable housing, unemployment benefits, healthcare coverage, or better resources for substance abuse and mental health care, including for veterans with PTSD. At the very least, public spaces should remain public, civil liberties should be upheld even for those without a home, and people who are homeless should have access to basic services instead of being criminalized by restrictive ordinances designed to make them go somewhere else -- anywhere else -- wherever that might be.
Take action: Tell Colorado communities to stop passing and enforcing laws that make it a crime to be homeless.