PUMP Act Protections Take Effect

Posted on:

May 5, 2023

The Providing Urgent Maternal Protections for Nursing Mothers Act — more commonly known as the PUMP Act — went into full effect on April 28, 2023. The PUMP Act gives more nursing employees the right to receive break time to pump and a private place to pump at work.

On December 29, 2022, President Biden signed the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023 into law. In January 2023, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) Wage and Hour Division updated its “Fact Sheet #73: FLSA Protections for Employees to Pump Breast Milk at Work” in light of the PUMP Act’s new protections.

While some states already had protections for nursing employees in place, the PUMP Act provides protections nationwide under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The FLSA requires employers to provide reasonable break time for an employee to express breast milk for their nursing child for one year after the child’s birth, and such employee needs to express the milk. Employees are entitled to a place to pump at work, other than a bathroom, that is shielded from view and free from intrusion from coworkers and the public.

Under the FLSA, when an employee is using break time at work to express breast milk, they either:

Must be completely relieved from duty; or
Must be paid for the break time.

Further, when employers provide paid breaks, an employee who uses such break time to pump breast milk must be compensated in the same way that other employees are compensated for break time.

For more information about time that must be compensated, see Fact Sheet #22.