White Pine Senior Living to Pay $73,000 in EEOC Pregnancy Discrimination Lawsuit

MINNEAPOLIS – White Pine Senior Living, an assisted living facility in Minnesota, has agreed to pay $73,000 and provide other equitable relief to settle a pregnancy discrimination and retaliation lawsuit filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the federal agency announced today.

According to the EEOC’s lawsuit, White Pine Senior Living awarded a promotion to a female employee, but once the manager learned of the employee’s pregnancy, the manager threatened to demote her and launched a campaign of excessive and heightened scrutiny of her work. The employee opposed the discrimination and filed a discrimination charge with the EEOC, causing the manager to retaliate through negative performance reviews that threatened employment-related harm. White Pine Senior Living finally forced the employee to quit by insisting that it must hire a replacement for her because it assumed the pregnant employee would not be reliable.

Such alleged conduct violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employers from discriminating against employees on the basis of sex, including pregnancy. After first attempting to reach a pre-litigation settlement through its conciliation process, the EEOC filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the District of Minneapolis (Civil Action No. 1:25-cv-59).

The consent decree resolving the case requires White Pine Senior Living to pay $73,000 in lost wages and other monetary relief to the former employee, revise its anti-discrimination policies, allow the EEOC to monitor complaints of pregnancy discrimination, and conduct training designed to prevent future Title VII violations based on pregnancy discrimination and retaliation.

For more information on pregnancy discrimination, please visit https://www.eeoc.gov/pregnancy-discrimination. For more information on retaliation, please visit https://www.eeoc.gov/retaliation.

The EEOC's Chicago District Office is responsible for processing charges of employment discrimination, administrative enforcement and the conduct of agency litigation in Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and North and South Dakota, with area offices in Milwaukee and Minneapolis.

The EEOC is the sole federal agency authorized to investigate and litigate against businesses and other private sector employers for violations of federal laws prohibiting employment discrimination. For public sector employers, the EEOC shares jurisdiction with the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division; the EEOC is responsible for investigating charges against state and local government employers before referring them to DOJ for potential litigation. The EEOC also is responsible for coordinating the federal government’s employment antidiscrimination effort. More information about the EEOC is available at www.eeoc.gov. Stay connected with the latest EEOC news by subscribing to our email updates.