San Jose Pregnancy Discrimination Attorneys

Pregnancy should never cost you your job, your position, or your peace of mind. If you were demoted, denied accommodations, or terminated during or after your pregnancy in San Jose, Miracle Mile Law Group can help. Contact us today for a free, confidential consultation.

San Jose's Workforce Is Bigger Than Its Reputation

San Jose gets called the capital of Silicon Valley, and it's true that companies like Adobe, PayPal, Cisco, eBay, and Zoom are headquartered here. But the city's actual workforce is far broader than tech campuses. San Jose is home to major healthcare systems, one of the busiest regional airports in Northern California, a large retail and hospitality sector, and one of the most diverse immigrant workforces in the country, including one of the largest Vietnamese-American communities anywhere in the United States.

Pregnancy discrimination doesn't look the same across all of that. A denied accommodation at a hospital looks different from a demotion at a software company, which looks different from reduced hours at a retail store near Santana Row. What stays the same is the law, and the fact that employers across every one of these industries sometimes treat a pregnancy announcement as a reason to start pushing someone out.

What Pregnancy Discrimination Actually Looks Like

Very few employers state the real reason directly. Instead, the treatment shifts. A project gets quietly reassigned. A manager who once had no concerns suddenly starts documenting them. A promotion conversation goes silent. None of it is labeled as pregnancy discrimination, but the timing tells its own story.

Under California's Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA), it is illegal to discriminate against an employee because of pregnancy, childbirth, or a related medical condition. FEHA applies to employers with five or more employees, far broader than the federal Pregnancy Discrimination Act's 15-employee threshold. Many San Jose small businesses, retail locations, and clinics are covered without realizing it.

Your Leave Rights: PDL and CFRA Stack Together

This is the part of pregnancy law that gets misunderstood most often, and getting it wrong can cost an employee weeks of leave they were legally entitled to.

These are separate and additive, not either-or. An eligible employee can take up to four months of PDL for pregnancy-related disability, then take up to 12 weeks of CFRA leave afterward to bond with the baby. We regularly hear from San Jose clients who were told, incorrectly, that their leave maxed out at 12 weeks total. If your leave was miscounted, or your job changed while you were out, that is worth having reviewed.

Both PDL and CFRA leave are unpaid, but you may qualify for State Disability Insurance (SDI) during pregnancy-related disability and Paid Family Leave (PFL) benefits during bonding leave. Taking either does not affect your job protection.

Your Right to Reasonable Accommodations

Pregnancy qualifies as a temporary disability for accommodation purposes under California law. Your employer must engage in a timely, good faith interactive process to identify workable accommodations, and provide them unless doing so creates an undue hardship, a high bar requiring significant difficulty or expense.

Reasonable accommodations may include:

• Modified work schedules or reduced hours
• More frequent breaks, including rest and bathroom breaks
• Seating, if your job normally requires standing, common in retail and hospitality roles
• Lifting restrictions, particularly relevant for healthcare and warehouse employees
• Temporary transfer away from chemical exposure or physically demanding tasks
• Time off for prenatal appointments
• Remote work, where the role reasonably allows it

A point employers frequently get wrong: an employer cannot force you onto leave when another reasonable accommodation would let you keep working. Being told to "just start your leave now" when you asked for lighter duties instead isn't a lawful accommodation. It's a way of cutting your paycheck short under the appearance of flexibility.

Where This Shows Up Across San Jose's Industries

• Healthcare. Nurses, technicians, and clinical staff at San Jose's hospital systems often need lifting restrictions or shift changes during pregnancy. Requests get delayed, dismissed, or met with sudden scrutiny of performance.
• Tech and software. Employees returning from leave during a fixed promotion or stock refresh cycle sometimes find themselves quietly skipped, with the explanation that they "weren't around to be considered."
• Retail and hospitality. Reduced hours and shift changes that shrink a paycheck without ever amounting to an outright firing, common in stores and restaurants throughout downtown San Jose and the surrounding retail corridors.
• Airport and logistics work. Physical accommodation needs around lifting, standing, and scheduling for employees at Norman Y. Mineta San Jose International Airport and nearby logistics and warehouse operations.
• Immigrant and visa-sponsored employees. Many San Jose workers hesitate to request accommodations or push back on mistreatment out of fear that speaking up could affect their job security or immigration status. That fear does not reduce your legal protections, and an employer who counts on it is compounding the problem.

Retaliation Is Its Own Claim

If you requested an accommodation, took PDL or CFRA leave, or complained about your treatment, and then faced consequences, that retaliation is a separate violation from the underlying discrimination. Adverse actions can include termination, demotion, reduced hours, a sudden negative review, or exclusion from responsibilities you previously had.

You don't have to be right about the underlying issue to be protected. You only need a reasonable, good faith belief that what happened was unlawful. Retaliation claims are often the strongest part of a case because the timeline is objective, and when negative treatment follows closely behind protected activity, that sequence is difficult for an employer to explain away.

Our Track Record in Pregnancy Discrimination Cases

We have represented pregnant employees at every stage of this experience, and our results reflect how often employers underestimate these cases:

• Terminated at seven months pregnant under the pretense of the pandemic. Our firm first-chaired a contentious two-and-a-half-week trial for a legal assistant fired while seven months pregnant. The jury returned a verdict, and the court subsequently awarded over $900,000 in attorney's fees and $95,000 in costs, bringing the total judgment to more than $1.1 million.
• Fired after giving notice of her pregnancy. A part-time sales assistant was terminated shortly after disclosing her pregnancy to her employer. We secured her a $1,100,000 settlement.
• Terminated after disclosure, before any accommodation was even addressed. We secured a $510,000 settlement for a client fired after disclosing her pregnancy.
• Terminated upon returning from pregnancy leave. Her job was gone by the time she returned, resulting in a $206,000 settlement.
• Fired shortly after disclosure, resolved before litigation escalated. We secured a $127,500 settlement for an employee terminated shortly after telling her employer she was pregnant.

Across these cases, the pattern holds: employers often assume that framing a termination around "performance" or "restructuring" will hold up, even when the timing points directly back to a pregnancy disclosure or leave request. Our results say otherwise.

Where San Jose Cases Get Filed

Employment cases arising in San Jose are generally filed in Santa Clara County Superior Court, the same court that handles matters throughout the South Bay. Local court familiarity, from motion practice and discovery timelines to how juries drawn from this community respond to tech-industry and healthcare fact patterns, shapes how a case gets built from the outset.

Miracle Mile Law Group is a trial firm. Our founder, Justin Hanassab, first-chaired the two-and-a-half-week pregnancy discrimination trial referenced above, which resulted in a verdict and fee award exceeding $1.1 million. He began his career defending Fortune 500 companies before dedicating his practice to representing employees, giving him insight into how employers and their counsel build their defense.

Important Deadlines

What You May Be Able to Recover

Because FEHA imposes no cap on damages, recovery in a pregnancy discrimination case can be substantial. Depending on the facts, it may include:

• Lost wages and benefits, both past and future
• Emotional distress damages
• Punitive damages where the employer's conduct was particularly egregious
• Attorney's fees and costs
• Reinstatement or other injunctive relief

Evidence That Strengthens a Pregnancy Discrimination Case

• The date you told your employer you were pregnant, and who you told
• Performance reviews from before and after your announcement
• Any written accommodation request and the response you received
• Doctor's notes, leave paperwork, and PDL or CFRA correspondence
• Emails, texts, and messages, especially anything praising your work before the announcement
• Your termination letter, separation agreement, or stated reason for the firing
• Names of coworkers who witnessed relevant events or were treated differently
• A dated timeline written while your memory is fresh

Preserve only what relates to you and your own work. Do not take confidential client data or trade secrets, as that creates a separate legal problem that can undermine an otherwise strong case. And do not sign a severance agreement before an attorney reviews it, since signing often means giving up the exact rights you would need to bring a claim.

Speak With a San Jose Pregnancy Discrimination Attorney

You do not need to be certain you have a case before reaching out. Most people are not, because employers rarely make the reason obvious. What matters is that the treatment changed after you disclosed your pregnancy, and you deserve a straight answer from an attorney who handles these cases every day.

Miracle Mile Law Group represents employees exclusively. We have recovered over $75 million for mistreated workers across California, including a $1.1 million verdict and fee award for a legal assistant fired at seven months pregnant, and a $1.1 million settlement for a sales assistant terminated after giving notice of her pregnancy. Consultations are free and confidential, and we work on contingency, meaning there is no fee unless we recover for you.

If you experienced pregnancy discrimination at a San Jose workplace, contact Miracle Mile Law Group for a free, confidential case evaluation.

San Jose Pregnancy Discrimination FAQs

Miracle Mile Law Group — San Jose Employment Attorneys