Published July 28, 2025
On July 28, 2025, EPPC scholars Rachel N. Morrison and Eric Kniffin filed an amicus brief in United States Conference of Catholic Bishops v. EEOC on behalf of EPPC in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in support of several Catholic ministries challenging a workplace abortion-accommodation mandate.
After Congress passed the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA), which provides women workplace accommodation protections for “pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions,” the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) issued a rule requiring employers, like the Catholic ministries, to provide accommodations for their employees who wish to abort their unborn children.
EPPC’s brief puts the EEOC’s challenged abortion-accommodation mandate in its political context:
In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and returned the issue of abortion “to the people and their elected representatives.” Rejecting the Supreme Court’s direction, President Biden announced “actions” the day Dobbs was issued that his administration would take in response. He “committed to doing everything in his power” to “protect access” to abortion. The executive branch, following Biden’s lead, sought to unilaterally (and unlawfully) expand abortion access by reinterpreting federal laws, like the PWFA, to promote abortion.
This brief summarizes actions that federal agencies took post-Dobbs, conveniently discovering never-before-found authority to advance the Biden administration’s pro-abortion political agenda. This pattern makes it easier to see that the EEOC’s challenged abortion-accommodation mandate is not a lawful exercise of the legitimate authority delegated to it by Congress, but rather an unlawful attempt to advance policy goals that could not be accomplished through the legislative process.
Rachel N. Morrison is a Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, where she directs EPPC’s Administrative State Accountability Project, which advocates for an authentic understanding of the human person in the drafting, implementation, and rollback of government regulations.
