Amazon Hit With A Class Action Suit by Four Former Employees

The nonprofit is representing the plaintiffs alongside the law firm Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel, and the complaint seeks lost pay, benefits, punitive damages, and an injunction against the practices it describes.

One plaintiff, Jennifer Hatch, processed customer returns at a facility in Lancaster, New York, work that required hours of standing and lifting boxes. After her pregnancy was classified as high risk in early 2025, she asked for a thirty-pound lifting limit, a fifteen-minute sitting break every four hours, and shifts capped at eight hours.

The complaint says Amazon delayed and then denied those requests, that a manager later refused to let her use an available chair, and that she was fired under the attendance policy after leaving early for hospital visits.

The federal law at the center of the case requires employers with at least fifteen workers to provide reasonable accommodations for pregnancy- and childbirth-related conditions unless doing so would impose undue hardship on the business.

A Better Balance campaigned for roughly a decade to get the statute passed, and it took effect in June 2023. The statute has since drawn legal challenges, though the EEOC continues to enforce it.

In response to this, Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel contested the claims, stating the allegations “contain inaccuracies and omit important details”.

She maintained that employee welfare is a core priority, said the company supports tens of thousands of workers with pregnancy accommodations each year, and noted that Amazon approved more than 99.9 percent of pregnancy-related accommodation requests over the past year.

The lawsuit argues that the conduct it describes is already documented in state investigations in New Jersey and New York and in findings by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Amazon was the second-largest private employer in the United States at the end of 2025, with roughly 1.58 million workers, and the plaintiffs contend the policies at issue affect thousands of pregnant employees across the country.

One correction worth your attention. Your draft had Amazon approving “over 99% of all pregnancy accommodation requests over the years.” Nantel’s figure was more than 99.9 percent, and she scoped it to the past year, not the company’s history. Both the number and the timeframe matter here, since the narrower claim is the one Amazon can defend.