Pregnancy Discrimination Lawyer for Macomb County
You handed your supervisor a note from your OB, and the plant sent you home. No light duty, no pay, come back after the baby.
Or the points kept coming for prenatal appointments until the last one ended your job. Or you came back from leave to a different shift and a lower classification. Macomb County builds things, and its pregnancy cases come off the floor and out of the hospitals more than anywhere else I practice. Do you have a case? If the employer knew you were pregnant, refused an accommodation it gives to other workers, and the paperwork shows it, yes. The evaluation is a free 15-minute call and termination cases are handled on contingency. Your first deadline is the EEOC’s 300 days. I’m Warren Astbury, I take pregnancy discrimination cases for employees only, and the plant version is one I have tried.
How pregnancy discrimination cases look in Macomb County
Roughly 875,000 people live in Macomb County, and a large share of them work in manufacturing, defense, skilled trades, or the hospitals that serve those workers. The pregnancy cases follow the work.
Sent home from the line with a restriction
Stellantis’s Sterling Heights Assembly Plant and Warren Truck Assembly, Ford’s Sterling Axle Plant, and the supplier shops along Van Dyke, Mound, and Groesbeck all have some form of placement or restricted-work process, and most of those processes were built for injured workers. When the restriction comes from an OB instead of a plant physician, the answer is often “we can’t place you,” followed by a sick-leave form and no paycheck. The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act says the employer cannot do that when another accommodation would have kept you working. The evidence is the restriction slip, the placement or medical-department paperwork, the names of coworkers on restricted work for a shoulder or a back, and your pay stubs showing the weeks you lost.
The salaried engineer at the Tech Center
The GM Global Technical Center in Warren employs thousands of engineers, designers, and program staff. Their pregnancy cases look like corporate cases anywhere: the vehicle program reassigned “for continuity” before leave, the year-end rating that quietly slips, the role that is “consolidated” while you are out. What is different is the record. Program assignments, calibration ratings, and reorganization decks are all written down and dated, which is how the case gets proven. The evidence is your assignment history, the rating trend before and after the announcement, and the reorganization documents showing whose role was consolidated and whose was not.
Twelve-hour shifts and patient handling
Henry Ford Macomb in Clinton Township, McLaren Macomb in Mount Clemens, and Ascension Macomb-Oakland in Warren staff their units with nurses and techs on twelve-hour rotations that involve lifting and repositioning patients. A pregnant nurse who asks for eight-hour shifts, a lift-team assist, or a move off a heavy unit is often told staffing will not allow it, then written up for attendance when the pregnancy makes the twelves impossible. The evidence is the request and the response, the staffing grid showing who got schedule changes for other reasons, and the attendance discipline tied to dates.
Defense work: General Dynamics and the Arsenal
General Dynamics Land Systems in Sterling Heights is a private employer, so the statutes on this page apply to its workers the same way they apply at the plants. The Detroit Arsenal in Warren, home to U.S. Army TACOM, is different: its civilian employees are federal workers, and a pregnancy discrimination complaint there begins with contacting the agency’s EEO counselor within 45 days of the act. If that is your situation, say so when you call, because the process and the clock are unlike anything else here. For the contractor employees, the evidence is the same as at any plant: the restriction, the refusal, the comparators, and the timing.
The law that applies
Macomb County plants and hospitals are large, so all four statutes usually apply. The small machine shop in Shelby Township with nine employees is the exception, and for it Michigan law alone carries the case.
The Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act (MCL 37.2101) prohibits pregnancy discrimination as a form of sex discrimination at every Michigan employer with one or more employees. Three years to file, no agency charge, and no ceiling on emotional-distress damages. A Macomb County jury can put a number on months of lost income and stress during a pregnancy without a statutory cap.
Title VII, through the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, applies at 15 employees and requires an EEOC charge within 300 days, filed through the Detroit Field Office. Compensatory and punitive damages are limited to $50K–$300K depending on how many people the employer has.
The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, effective June 27, 2023, is the statute written for the sent-home-from-the-line case. At 15 employees, it requires the employer to accommodate known pregnancy-related limitations, including lifting, standing, and schedule limits, unless it can prove undue hardship. It specifically prohibits requiring leave when another accommodation is available, which is what a “we can’t place you” policy does. It uses the same 300-day EEOC charge as Title VII.
The FMLA applies at 50 employees within 75 miles for workers with 12 months and 1,250 hours. Pregnancy-related absences and maternity leave are protected, and an attendance system that assesses points for FMLA-protected days violates it. Two years to sue, three if willful, no agency step. The way an FMLA request itself triggers the discipline is described in fired after asking for FMLA leave.
The deadline trap in a plant case is the grievance. Workers wait for the union to process a grievance over the placement decision, and the EEOC’s 300 days run out while they wait. The grievance has no effect on that clock. Every deadline is on the Michigan employment claim deadlines page.
| Claim | Who’s covered | Deadline | Damages |
|---|---|---|---|
| ELCRA sex/pregnancy discrimination | Every Michigan employer, one employee and up | Three years; no agency filing | Wages lost, future wages, emotional distress without a cap, attorney fees |
| Title VII (Pregnancy Discrimination Act) | Employers of 15 or more | 300 days to file an EEOC charge | Wages lost; compensatory and punitive capped between $50K and $300K |
| Pregnant Workers Fairness Act | Employers of 15 or more | 300 days to file an EEOC charge | Remedies mirror Title VII |
| FMLA interference and retaliation | 50 or more employees within 75 miles; 12 months and 1,250 hours of service | Two years; three when willful | Lost wages and benefits, matched by liquidated damages, attorney fees |
Where your Macomb County pregnancy discrimination case gets filed
State claims file in the Macomb County Circuit Court, the 16th Judicial Circuit, at 40 N. Main Street in Mount Clemens. Federal claims file in, or get removed to, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan at the Theodore Levin U.S. Courthouse in Detroit.
For a plant pregnancy case the PWFA is often the strongest theory, and it is a federal statute, which means the employer can move an ELCRA-plus-PWFA complaint to Detroit. That is not fatal. Federal juries in the Eastern District include Macomb County residents, and the PWFA’s forced-leave rule is clear enough that summary judgment is a hard motion for the employer to win. But when the comparators are strong and the accommodation claim is secondary, an ELCRA-only complaint in Mount Clemens keeps the case in front of a jury of people from Warren, Sterling Heights, and Clinton Township who have worked under an attendance-point system themselves. The Macomb County employment lawyer page goes deeper on the 16th Circuit and its juries.
Whether you worked at an assembly plant in Sterling Heights, the Tech Center in Warren, or a hospital unit in Clinton Township, the courthouse is the same two options, and the choice gets made before anything is filed.
UAW placement rules, the grievance, and your PWFA rights
Most hourly workers at the Macomb County assembly plants and many at the suppliers are UAW-represented, and the collective bargaining agreement has its own language about restricted work and medical placement. That language matters, but not the way employers describe it. A contract that limits light duty to occupational injuries does not amend the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act. Federal law sets the floor, and a bargaining agreement cannot bargain beneath it. If the plant has restricted-work assignments and gives them to workers hurt on the job, it has to explain why extending one to a pregnant worker is an undue hardship, and “the contract doesn’t say so” is not an answer.
The grievance is worth filing. It is also not your lawsuit. The union controls the grievance and decides whether it goes to arbitration; the arbitrator reads the contract, not the statute. Your PWFA, ELCRA, Title VII, and FMLA claims belong to you, and they are decided in court. Neither losing the grievance nor waiting on it affects those claims, and neither stops the EEOC’s 300-day clock or the FMLA’s two years.
One more piece. Ask your committeeperson, in writing, for the placement records and any grievance settlements involving restricted work in your department. Those documents identify the comparators the case is built on, and the union is often the fastest way to get them. If the union declines to pursue the grievance at all, that is a separate question with a six-month deadline, and it does not change the analysis of the claims against the company.
What to do in the first 72 hours
- Save the restriction slip and every version of it. Photograph the OB’s note, the plant medical department’s response, and the sick-leave or placement forms before you turn anything in or lose access to the portal.
- Restate your accommodation request in writing. A text or email to your supervisor and HR saying what restriction you have and what work you can do gives the PWFA request a date; if the pregnancy has produced a complication that qualifies as a disability, the PWDCRA also requires written notice within 182 days.
- Request your personnel and medical-placement file under Bullard-Plawecki. Michigan’s Employee Right to Know Act covers the personnel file, and the written request creates a record that you asked before the employer knew a lawyer was involved.
- Print your attendance and points history. The portal will close; the printout, matched against your appointment dates, is the core exhibit in a points case.
- Write down who was on restricted work. Names, departments, what the restriction was, and how long they were placed, because those workers are your comparators.
- Do not sign a separation or last-chance agreement. Both can release the claims on this page, and a last-chance agreement in particular is often used to paper over a discriminatory discharge.
Macomb County pregnancy discrimination questions
Does the UAW contract’s light-duty rule override the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act at a Macomb County plant?
No. A collective bargaining agreement cannot waive or reduce rights created by a federal anti-discrimination statute. If the contract limits restricted work to occupational injuries, the plant still has to accommodate a pregnancy-related restriction under the PWFA unless it proves undue hardship, and the fact that restricted-work slots exist for injured employees makes that proof difficult. File the grievance, but protect the statutory claim separately.
What is a comparator in a Sterling Heights or Warren plant pregnancy case, and how do I find one?
A comparator is a coworker who was not pregnant, had a similar restriction or absence record, and was treated better: placed on restricted work, excused from points, or kept in their classification. In a plant, comparators are found in placement records, grievance settlements, and department memory. Write down names and what you remember now; discovery and your union committeeperson can produce the documents later.
I’m a federal civilian employee at TACOM. Where does my pregnancy discrimination complaint go?
Not to the EEOC on the 300-day schedule. Federal civilian employees at the Detroit Arsenal must contact their agency’s EEO counselor within 45 days of the discriminatory act to start the federal-sector process, which moves through the agency before any lawsuit. Missing the 45 days usually ends the claim. If you work for a contractor on the Arsenal rather than the Army itself, the private-sector rules on this page apply.
Can a Macomb County hospital refuse to change my 12-hour shifts or patient-handling assignments during pregnancy?
Only if it proves undue hardship, which is a high bar for a hospital with 15 or more employees under the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act. Shorter shifts, a lift-team assist, or a temporary move to a lighter unit are the kind of accommodations the statute contemplates. If the hospital grants similar schedule changes to staff for non-pregnancy reasons, refusing yours is also evidence of sex discrimination under ELCRA.
I was told to “come back when you’re 100%” after my baby was born at a Macomb County supplier. Is that lawful?
Generally no. Recovery from childbirth is a pregnancy-related condition covered by the PWFA, so a “no restrictions, no return” policy at an employer with 15 or more employees is a refusal to accommodate. If you were FMLA-eligible, refusing to restore you at the end of protected leave is interference. And under ELCRA the policy is evidence of pregnancy discrimination if injured workers return with restrictions while you could not.
Talk to a pregnancy discrimination lawyer who takes Macomb County cases
If a Macomb County plant, hospital, supplier, or defense contractor sent you home, pointed you out, or would not take you back because of a pregnancy, call (313) 701-2448 or set up a free 15-minute case evaluation. Bring the restriction note and whatever attendance records you have. I will tell you whether the comparators are there.
Warren Astbury, Harvard Law School, 2009. Fifteen years representing employees and no one else, with more than 50 cases tried to a jury verdict. The same claim from a different county is covered on the pregnancy discrimination pages for Wayne County, Oakland County, and Washtenaw County.