#daniel traynor

Chris Geidner at Law Dork:

A federal judge in North Dakota issued an injunction on Monday blocking the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission from protecting any employees of any members of a nationwide Catholic association who are seeking time off or other accommodations under the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act for an abortion or in vitro fertilization treatment.

U.S. District Judge Daniel Traynor, a Trump appointee to the federal court in North Dakota, issued the religion-infused preliminary injunction to partially block enforcement of an EEOC rule implementing the 2022 law, along with related implementation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as to the Catholic Benefits Association and its members — current or future — nationwide. The order covers more than 8,000 employers — including thousands of churches — across the country. The PWFA was passed in December 2022 and is supposed to protect covered workers from discrimination on the basis of “pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions” by, in part, requiring employers to provide employees with reasonable accommodations. The EEOC proposed its implementing rule for the PWFA in August 2023, stating in part that abortion and fertility treatment, including IVF, are covered by the law’s protections. That rule, which does not relate to insurance coverage, went into effect in June.

“It is a precarious time for people of religious faith in America,” Traynor declared in the introduction to his 21-page opinion, criticizing “the repeated illegal and unconstitutional administrative actions against one of the founding principles of our country, the free exercise of religion.” Ultimately, Traynor concluded that happened again here, finding that the CBA is likely to succeed in its challenge to the rule and related Title VII enforcement guidance under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Any appeal would go to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, which only has one Democratic appointee among its 11 judges.

[...] Traynor sided with the Catholic employees — rejecting the EEOC’s arguments — on virtually all points, from standing to the underlying religious freedom claims to the scope of his eventual injunction. (Notably, Traynor gave little credit to the EEOC’s argument that “the Final Rule and Guidance acknowledge that employers may have RFRA defenses and commit to a fact-sensitive, case-by-case analysis.” Instead, he found that such an approach is not likely sufficient because the “burden of investigation and possible litigation” would remain.) The injunction is extremely broad, barring the EEOC from enforcing accommodations required under the PWFA rule relating to “abortion or infertility treatments,” along with guidance relating to “abortion, fertility treatments, or gender transition“ under Title VII, including recent workplace harassment guidance.