Five women working as cops in the NYPD claim they were discriminated against upon returning from maternity leave, after the department made them endure unsanitary conditions when they had to pump breast milk.
That includes having to breast pump in the back of patrol cars and storing their milk in maggot-infested refrigerators, the women claim in their lawsuit.
Simone Teagle, Theresa M. Mahon, Melissa Soto-Germosen, Viviana Ayende and Elizabeth Ortiz are named as plaintiffs in the lawsuit, announced by the Sanders Law Firm on its website on Sunday.
Five women have come forward to allege the were discriminated against by the NYPD when they returned from maternity leave to work for the department and had to pump their breast milk while on the job
A picture showing a room the plaintiffs claimed the NYPD provided for breast pumping
A yellow pump is seen in a picture of a room the plaintiffs claim was set aside by the NYPD for the purpose of officers who wanted to ‘express’ breast milk
The firm claims that the department failed for 12 years to accommodate nursing mothers with ‘reasonable’ break times and proper locations for using breast pumps.
The claims are being sought as a class action to include other NYPD employees who claim they have been similarly discriminated against, going back to August 15, 2007.
Also named as defendants are New York’s current Mayor Bill de Blasio, former Mayor Mike Bloomberg and former Police Commissioners Ray Kelly, William Bratton and James O’Neill, as well as the department’s current top cop, Dermot F. Shea.
In a statement to the New York Post, NYPD Sergeant Jessica McRorie said the department was in compliance with federal, state and local laws to provide reasonable accommodations to express breast milk’.
The mothers said that the humiliation they suffered caused some of them to stop breast feeding, which resulted in painful mastitis, and even a miscarriage from the stress, the Post reports.
‘Every time you say something, they make you feel like, ‘Why are you doing this? You shouldn’t have a kid,’ Soto-Germosen told the Post, referring to her superiors.
‘They made you feel bad for having a son and wanting to breast feed him’.
In addition to unsanitary conditions, they women claim they weren’t given enough time to breast pump, that they were ridiculed and retaliated against, including loss of choice jobs when they complained.
Soto-Germosen, 16 years on the force and assigned to the 42nd Precinct in the Bronx, said she returned from maternity leave in 2017 and was forced to breast pump in an NYPD bathroom in front of other female officers, or in a bodega restroom while out on patrol.
The 42nd then offered her to store her breast milk in a refrigerator inside a women’s restroom that was overrun with maggots.
‘I’m supposed to keep my kid’s milk in a refrigerator with maggots?’ she asked, in an interview with the Post.
Melissa Soto-Germosen, 16 years on the force and assigned to the 42nd Precinct in the Bronx, said she returned from maternity leave in 2017 and was forced to breast pump in an NYPD bathroom in front of other female officers, or in a bodega restroom while out on patrol
‘I’m supposed to keep my kid’s milk in a refrigerator with maggots?’ asked Melissa Soto-Germosen, pictured with her son
She later told WABC that she was told she was ‘like a cow, producing milk’.
The 40-year-old said got pregnant again near the start of 2018, but about 2 months into her pregnancy miscarriaged over the stress she suffered from pumping milk for her first child.
Mahon, also a 16-year-veteran, was at the 66th Precinct in Borough Park, Brooklyn, in 2014, after she gave birth to her third child, and was forced to pump and store milk in her own car while on duty.
Theresa Mahon, a 16-year-NYPD-veteran, says she was at the 66th Precinct in Borough Park, Brooklyn, in 2014, after she gave birth to her third child, and was forced to pump and store milk in her own car while on duty
The 45-year-old officer claims in the lawsuit that she had been assigned a 15-hour traffic shift and that she had to remove her service weapon and bullet-proof vest while covering up her car window to pump her breast milk.
Teagle, 38, who has since retired, says that while working at the 113th Precinct in Jamaica, Queens, she too had to breast pump out of her own vehicle while on duty, and that she kept her milk in a lunch box.
Simone Teagle, 38, one of the five plaintiffs and who is now retired, had worked for the 113th Precinct in Jamaica, Queens
Teagle said she too had to breast pump out of her own vehicle while on duty, and that she kept her milk in a lunch box
Ortiz, 31, who serves on a housing authority unit on Staten Island, told the Post that conditions were so intolerable that she gave up breast feeding her now 18-month-old child, plummeting the mom into postpartum depression.
‘That was the most heartbreaking thing — choosing my job or choosing my son and not making any waves’, she said.
The officer adds that she was criticized when she complained about working midnight shift as a new mother, the lawsuit says.
‘Aww, you do not want midnights because you are tired?’ she claimed her boss said, according to the suit. ‘Yeah … midnights suck. You are not the only cop here on midnight with a child’.
‘You have to suck it up and deal with it — that’s how it is’, Ortiz told the Post.
Ayende, 42, who works out of the 40th Precinct in the Bronx, accused a female boss of refusing to ‘re-fit her with another protective vest to accommodate her new breast size’, the lawsuit says.
The legal action points out that the NYPD has to provide ‘reasonable break time for an employee to express breast milk for her nursing child for 1 year after the child’s birth,’ under federal law passed in 2010.
The claims made by the five women (pictured) are being sought as a class action to include other NYPD employees who claim they have been similarly discriminated against, going back to August 15, 2007
That place of bathroom should be ‘shielded from view and free from intrusion from coworkers’ and there should be a proper place for storage.
The plaintiffs in February filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, claiming the NYPD had not met its federally mandated requirements.
Within a month, the department installed two enclosed ‘pumping pods’ at its headquarters in Lower Manhattan, the Post reports.
McRorie, the NYPD spokesperson, said that requests to pump breast mil are ‘presumed and granted upon request to meet the immediate needs of the employee’.
‘This allows the department to engage in a dialogue to determine an appropriate scheduled, a reasonable amount of time to express milk, and available locations to lactate’. McRorie said.
‘Retaliation’ she said is ‘prohibited against any person requesting a reasonable accommodation to express breast milk and any member of the service who engages in such retaliation or harassment is subject to disciplinary action’.
The plaintiffs in February filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, claiming the NYPD had not met its federally mandated requirements. Within a month, the department installed two enclosed ‘pumping pods’ at its headquarters