Breastfeeding at Work?

From law firm Stoel Rives's World of Work law blog: US Senator Jeff Merkley, D-Oregon, has announced his sponsorship of the Breastfeeding Promotion Act (BPA) in the U.S. Senate, following introduction of a companion in the U.S. House yesterday.  The measure would amend the anti-discrimination provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to:

• protect breast-feeding in the workplace;
• provide tax incentives for employers that establish private lactation methods in the workplace;
• establish minimum safety standards for breast pumps;
• make breast feeding equipment tax deductible; and
• create time and privacy for working mothers to express milk.

Although the idea has been around for at least a decade, the bill is presently described as an extension of a 2007 Oregon law which requires employers to provide additional rest breaks, and other accommodations, to nursing mothers in order to express and store breast milk. 

At first blush, Oregon's law only requires additional time to express and store breast milk for later use. The proposed BPA, on the other hand, would appear to protect the actual act of breastfeeding at work, which gives rise to an obvious question -- how would this proposal affect employer policies that do not allow the presence of non-employees (here, infants) in the workplace?

Washington, incidentally, has considered workplace breastfeeding legislation in the past, and in 2009 did pass an amendment to the state Law Against Discrimination that protects the right of a nursing mother to breastfeed in a place of public accommodation.  Notably, that legislation did not amend the employment provisions of the WLAD, and so does not really implicate the workplace the same way as the proposed federal BPA.

Nursing mothers are an important part of the workforce, and the scientific consensus surrounding the health and welfare benefits of breastfeeding for infants is clear -- and yet employers may have many legitimate, job-related, non-discriminatory reasons for wariness about breastfeeding in the workplace.  

How should the law balance these competing interests?