Pregnancy Discrimination Lawyer for Oakland County
In Oakland County the pregnancy case rarely starts with a firing. It starts with a program that moves off your desk in Auburn Hills, a year-end rating that drops in Troy, or a “reorganization” announced while you are home with a newborn.
The firing, or the return to a smaller job, comes later and arrives with a business explanation attached. Do you have a case? You do if the documents show the decision followed the announcement and the explanation does not hold up against how your peers were treated. The first call is free and takes fifteen minutes; termination cases are on contingency. The deadline that matters most is the EEOC’s 300 days for the federal claims. I’m Warren Astbury. I handle pregnancy discrimination cases for employees only, and the corporate version of the case is one I know well.
How pregnancy discrimination cases look in Oakland County
Oakland County runs on headquarters, engineering centers, hospitals, and professional offices, not assembly lines. Its pregnancy cases are quieter than the ones I see from plants, and they are usually better documented, because the people who make these decisions write things down.
The program that moved off your desk
Stellantis’s North American headquarters in Auburn Hills, and the supplier headquarters around it, Magna, BorgWarner, Lear in Southfield, are organized around vehicle programs and launches. An engineer or program manager who announces a pregnancy in the spring is quietly moved off the fall launch “so the timing works,” then rated as having had a light year. The rating drives the bonus, the promotion list, and eventually the reduction-in-force ranking. The evidence is your assignment history, the launch calendar, the email that reassigned the program, your prior ratings, and the ratings of the peers who kept their programs.
Exposure restrictions in the hospitals
Corewell Health’s Royal Oak and Troy campuses, Ascension Providence in Southfield and Novi, and Henry Ford West Bloomfield employ large numbers of nurses, radiology techs, and pharmacy and oncology staff. Pregnancy brings restrictions that have nothing to do with lifting: no chemotherapy compounding, limited radiation exposure, no anesthetic-gas rooms. The hospital’s answer is often a leave of absence, when a temporary rotation to a different unit would have solved it. That answer is exactly what the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act forbids. The evidence is the OB’s exposure note, the request you made, who was rotated when a coworker had a similar restriction for another reason, and the leave paperwork you were handed instead.
Quota, bonus, and territory in the Troy towers
The Big Beaver corridor holds Flagstar, Kelly Services, Comerica offices, and a row of insurance, staffing, and finance employers whose sales and recruiting staff live on variable pay. Maternity leave hits those roles in a specific way: the annual quota is not prorated, the accounts are “temporarily” reassigned and never come back, and the returning employee inherits a smaller book. Each of those is a change in the terms and conditions of employment because of pregnancy. The evidence is the compensation plan, the commission statements before and after, the territory or account list, and the message that said the reassignment was temporary.
The small practice in Birmingham or Bloomfield
Dental practices, med spas, boutique law and accounting firms, and family-owned retail along Woodward make up a large share of Oakland County employers, and many have fewer than 15 employees. Title VII and the PWFA do not reach them. Michigan’s ELCRA does, at one employee, and the owner who texted “we really need someone who can be here every day” has handed you the case. The evidence is that text, the schedule you were taken off, and a headcount showing how small the employer is, because that number decides which statute you are suing under.
The law that applies
Oakland County employers are mostly large enough that every statute applies, which means the case is usually pleaded under several at once. The exceptions are the small practices above, and for them the state statute does all of the work.
The Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act (MCL 37.2101) has covered pregnancy as sex discrimination for decades. Any employer with one or more employees, a three-year limitations period, no agency filing, and no cap on emotional-distress damages. That last feature matters in a county where the salaries, and therefore the back-pay numbers, run high, because Title VII’s caps do not move with income.
Title VII and the Pregnancy Discrimination Act apply at 15 employees. An EEOC charge must be filed within 300 days of the act you are complaining about, and in a demotion-then-termination case the clock may run from the demotion, not the firing. Compensatory and punitive damages together are capped at $50K–$300K by employer size.
The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, effective June 27, 2023, applies at 15 employees and creates an affirmative accommodation duty for known pregnancy-related limitations, including a temporary transfer away from exposures, unless the employer proves undue hardship. It also bars putting you on leave when another accommodation works. Same EEOC charge, same 300 days.
The FMLA applies at 50 employees within 75 miles, for employees with 12 months and 1,250 hours. The relevant rule in a reorganization case is the right to be restored to the same or an equivalent position, with equivalent pay, benefits, and responsibility. Two years to sue, three if willful, no agency step. The FMLA does not pay emotional-distress damages, which is one more reason the ELCRA count carries the case.
The deadline trap here is the demotion date. Oakland County professionals often tolerate the smaller role for a year hoping it will be fixed, then get fired, then call. By then the 300 days on the demotion have run and only the termination is left for the federal claims. ELCRA still reaches back three years. The full list of deadlines is on the Michigan employment claim deadlines page.
| Claim | Who’s covered | Deadline | Damages |
|---|---|---|---|
| ELCRA, MCL 37.2101 | One employee or more | Three years from each discriminatory act; no charge required | Lost pay going back and forward, uncapped emotional distress, fees |
| Title VII and the PDA | 15+ employees | 300 days to the EEOC, measured from each act, including a demotion | Lost pay; compensatory plus punitive limited to $50K–$300K by size |
| Pregnant Workers Fairness Act | 15+ employees | 300 days to the EEOC | Title VII’s remedy scheme applies |
| FMLA restoration right | 50+ within 75 miles; 12 months and 1,250 hours worked | Two years, or three for a willful violation | Lost compensation, an equal amount as liquidated damages, fees; no emotional distress |
Where your Oakland County pregnancy discrimination case gets filed
State-law claims go to the Oakland County Circuit Court, Michigan’s 6th Judicial Circuit, at 1200 N. Telegraph Road in Pontiac. Federal claims, and any state claims joined with them, can end up at the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan at the Theodore Levin U.S. Courthouse in Detroit, either because I file them there or because the employer removes the case.
In a reorganization case the venue decision is mostly about who decides pretext. A Pontiac jury drawn from Troy, Rochester Hills, Novi, Southfield, and the Bloomfields has sat in the meetings where a “business realignment” was announced and knows what it looks like when the realignment reaches one person. Federal court is more likely to resolve pretext on paper at summary judgment. When the employer is over 15 employees but the PWFA accommodation claim is not the center of the case, I often plead ELCRA alone and stay in Pontiac. The Oakland County employment lawyer page has more on the 6th Circuit and its jury pool.
A program manager from Troy, a radiology tech from Southfield, and an engineer from a Farmington Hills technical center all land in the same courthouse; the statute, not the city, decides which one.
The “reorganization” during maternity leave, and how it comes apart
This is the signature Oakland County pregnancy case, so it deserves its own section. You go on leave. Six weeks in, your director calls to say the department is being restructured, your role is being “absorbed,” and there will be a new position you are welcome to apply for. Or you return to find your reports now report to someone else and your title has a “senior” removed from it. HR describes it as a business decision unrelated to you.
Taking it apart is a matter of documents and dates. When was the restructuring first discussed, and by whom, and was that before or after your announcement? Who absorbed your duties, and is that person now doing the job you did under a different title? What were the selection criteria, when were they written, and were they applied to anyone else? Was the “new position” posted, and who got it? An FMLA-covered employer that fails to restore you to an equivalent job has to prove you would have lost the position even if you had never taken leave; that is its burden, not yours.
Comparators still matter, but the comparator here is often the reorganization itself: if a department of twelve was restructured and the only person whose role disappeared was the one on maternity leave, the business explanation carries the weight of one data point against eleven. The case in demoted after announcing a pregnancy follows this shape.
What to preserve: the org charts before and after, the announcement email and its metadata, your last three performance reviews, the leave-approval paperwork, and every message that mentions a transition plan or coverage during your leave. And the severance agreement, unsigned. Oakland County employers attach one to nearly every one of these separations, and it releases everything on this page. Read Michigan severance agreements explained before you respond to it.
What to do in the first 72 hours
- Send yourself the documents before your laptop is collected. Reviews, ratings, bonus letters, the program-reassignment email, the reorg announcement, the leave approval, and the Teams or Slack threads that mention your pregnancy or your leave.
- Confirm the accommodation request by email. If you asked for a unit transfer, a schedule change, or relief from an exposure verbally, restate it in writing today so the PWFA request has a timestamp; a pregnancy complication that qualifies as a disability also triggers the PWDCRA’s 182-day written-notice rule.
- Ask for your personnel file under Bullard-Plawecki. The written request forces the employer to produce the ratings and discipline history it will later rely on, and the file is often thinner than the story.
- Read the severance, but do not sign it. The consideration period, 21 days if you are over 40, exists so you can get advice, and the release inside is the reason they are offering money.
- Map the reorganization. Write down who was in your department before your leave, what each person does now, and who inherited your work, while you still remember the names.
- Stay employed if you still are. Quitting the diminished role before you have advice converts a clean demotion claim into a constructive-discharge fight and stops the back-pay clock.
Oakland County pregnancy discrimination questions
I was pulled off a program at an Auburn Hills automotive headquarters after announcing my pregnancy but wasn’t fired. Do I have a claim?
Possibly, yes. Discrimination law covers adverse changes to the terms and conditions of your job, not only termination. Losing a high-visibility program can lower your rating, your bonus, and your promotion prospects, and courts treat those as actionable harm when the reassignment was because of pregnancy. The EEOC clock runs from the reassignment, so do not wait for a firing to get advice.
My year-end rating and bonus dropped after maternity leave at a Troy office. Is that pregnancy discrimination?
It can be, if the drop is explained by the leave rather than your work. Counting leave months as zero production, refusing to prorate a quota, or rating you “below expectations” for a year in which you were on protected leave for twelve weeks is evidence of pregnancy and FMLA retaliation. Compare your pre-leave ratings and the treatment of colleagues who took other kinds of extended leave.
Can a Royal Oak or Southfield hospital put me on leave because of an exposure restriction during pregnancy?
Not if another accommodation would work and the hospital has 15 or more employees. The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act specifically prohibits requiring leave when a reasonable accommodation, such as a temporary rotation away from chemotherapy compounding or radiation, is available. The hospital must show that every alternative was an undue hardship. Ask for the transfer in writing and keep the response.
I work for a small Oakland County practice with fewer than 15 employees. Do I still have a pregnancy discrimination claim?
Yes, under Michigan law. Title VII and the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act apply only to employers with 15 or more employees, but Michigan’s Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act covers employers with one or more employees and treats pregnancy discrimination as sex discrimination. You have three years to file in Oakland County Circuit Court, no EEOC charge is required, and emotional-distress damages are not capped.
How do I prove my Oakland County employer’s “reorganization” during my maternity leave was really about the pregnancy?
With dates and documents. Show when the restructuring was first discussed relative to your announcement, who absorbed your duties and whether they are doing your old job, whether anyone else in the department lost a role, and whether the “new position” went to someone without a pregnancy. If your employer is FMLA-covered, it must prove you would have lost the job even without leave. Preserve org charts and announcement emails now.
Talk to a pregnancy discrimination lawyer who takes Oakland County cases
If your program, your rating, your title, or your job disappeared after you announced a pregnancy or went on leave in Oakland County, call (313) 701-2448 or book a free 15-minute case evaluation. Bring the org chart and the severance agreement. I will tell you whether the business explanation survives the dates.
I am Warren Astbury, Harvard Law School class of 2009, fifteen years on the employee side and never once on the employer’s, with more than 50 jury trials to verdict. If you worked in a neighboring county, the same case is described for Wayne County, Macomb County, and Washtenaw County.