A federal judge has agreed to consolidate two lawsuits against Frontier Airlines — one from its flight attendants and the other from four pilots — that both allege the company’s refusal to accommodate pregnancy and lactation.

The ACLU of Colorado filed suit on behalf of female pilots and flight attendants who had given birth during their time with Frontier. Allegedly, the airline did not make it possible for them to pump breast milk on the job.

One pilot claimed the company prohibited her from pumping while in uniform, even between flights. Another said airline representatives questioned her about “why she was not choosing to feed her child formula, why she thought it was acceptable to use a breast pump in the aircraft, and how long she planned to do so.” And a flight attendant reportedly gave up breastfeeding in order to to return to work.

“Frontier’s policies and practices challenged here are a legacy of the long and unfortunate history of sex discrimination in the airline industry as a whole,” the lawsuit on behalf of flight attendants argues. “Most airlines at one time had explicit policies forcing female flight attendants off the job when they got married or became pregnant, subjecting them to discriminatory requirements related to their weight and appearance, and imposing blatant gender stereotypes. Female pilots were almost unheard of.”

On September 30, U.S. District Court Judge Christine M. Arguello agreed to consolidate the two cases going forward. She had been overseeing the pilots’ lawsuit, while U.S. District Court Judge Raymond P. Moore had handled the flight attendants’ lawsuit. Although Frontier had objected, believing different policies applied to each group of plaintiffs, Arguello found that similar factual and legal questions applied to both.

Arguello noted that she will determine at a later time whether to try the two cases together before a jury. The flight attendants’ lawsuit is a class action on behalf of all similarly-situated workers.

The two cases contain largely parallel allegations: that Frontier forced employees onto unpaid leave during pregnancy and while breastfeeding, and prohibited them from using break time to pump in airplane lavatories. Both lawsuits alleged some form of penalty for nursing-related absences, plus a requirement for pilots to take unpaid leave after 32 weeks in their pregnancies.

The complaints pointed to violations federal civil rights law and state statues protecting pregnant and nursing workers.

Frontier generally denied the allegations, while countering that the company did provide a list of approved lactation rooms as well as “job-protected leave” in lieu of a ground assignment. 

To date, both lawsuits have survived Frontier’s motions to dismiss. Moore in July found the flight attendants had identified specific policies that adversely impacted them as nursing mothers, including the airline’s alleged practice of giving ground assignments to injured or disabled flight attendants, but not to those who were breastfeeding. Arguello, on the same day she consolidated the cases, rejected the airline’s argument that the pilots had failed to state a claim.

“Plaintiffs’ Complaint specifically alleges that Frontier provided accommodations to pilots who were ‘unable to fly’ for ‘reasons unrelated to pregnancy,’ while declining to provide those accommodations to pilots who were pregnant or nursing,” she wrote. “These allegations, if true, are sufficient to demonstrate that Frontier provided accommodations to other pilots who were ‘similar [to Plaintiffs] in their inability to work,’ while denying those accommodations to Plaintiffs.”

Although Frontier had contended that the plaintiffs could not sue because they were no longer pregnant and therefore not harmed by any policies, the plaintiffs successfully pointed to Roe v. Wade, the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that established the constitutional right to abortion. Given the short duration of pregnancy relative to the length of a lawsuit, and the possibility that the plaintiffs will become pregnant again, Roe gave the plaintiffs standing to sue, the court decided.

All of the named plaintiffs are based out of Denver International Airport. The cases are Hodgkins et al. v. Frontier Airlines, Inc. and Freyer et al. v. Frontier Airlines, Inc.