KFC must pay former employee $1.5 million after not letting her take breaks to pump breast milk
A woman in Delaware won a lawsuit stating that her co-workers and supervisors at a Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) restaurant where she once worked made it so hard for the new mom to take breaks to pump breast milk that her milk supply dried up. Now the franchise must pay her more than $1.5 million in damages.
Autumn Lampkins and her attorneys at Wilmington law firm Jacobs & Crumplar P.A. filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in July 2016, according to the Delaware News Journal. The suit claimed “this willful, intentional and unlawful gender-based harassment and discrimination violates the laws and regulations of both the United States … and the State of Delaware.” A jury agreed.
“It was a great and long-fought victory,” said one of Lampkins’s attorneys, Patrick Gallagher. “It’s a great day for women’s rights.”
Lampkins started working at the KFC location in 2014, a few months after giving birth to her son. She conveyed to her employer that she’d have to take breaks to pump breast milk, and she was told that would not be a problem, the paper reports.
But the nursing mom was only allowed to pump once during each 10-hour shift during training, even though doctors had told her to do it every two hours, she claimed in documents filed with the federal court. She was first allowed to pump in a single-stall bathroom, which had a surveillance camera that could not be turned off, according to the lawsuit. When she asked for more privacy, Lampkins was reportedly sent to the manager’s office instead.
Once her training was complete, Lampkins was transferred to a different KFC location and demoted by her new supervisor, Emily Martin, who “explicitly told Ms. Lampkins that her demotion to shift supervisor was because she was pumping breast milk while at work,” the lawsuit stated. Lampkins said her new co-workers started getting jealous and complaining about the “breaks” she was allowed to take to pump. They even allegedly threatened to walk out.
Lampkins said she started to take fewer breaks, which then led to physical pain. When milk ducts overfill, they can lead to a condition called breast engorgement, which can make breasts “tingle, ache, harden and feel like they’ll burst any second,” according to What to Expect.
Lampkins’s milk supply subsequently dried up, so she made the decision to switch her baby to formula. Fed up, she finally quit after finding out she was about to be fired for “inadvertently [taking a customer’s] jacket home,” according to court documents.
Yahoo Lifestyle has reached out to Lampkins’s lawyers as well as the law firm representing KFC, which has not yet commented on the case.
According to a 2016 Time magazine story, breastfeeding discrimination lawsuits have risen 800 percent in the past decade. Two-thirds of those cases have led to lost jobs for nursing moms, according to Fortune.
Lampkins will receive $25,000 in compensatory damages and $1.5 million in punitive damages from KFC, according to the ruling.
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