This site, maintained by the National Conference of State Legislatures, notes:
More than half of the states (39) have enacted legislation related to breastfeeding.
Thirty two states:
* allow mothers to breastfeed in any public or private location (California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, Texas, Vermont and Virginia).
Fifteen states:
* exempt breastfeeding from public indecency laws (Alaska, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin). Ten states
* have laws related to breastfeeding in the workplace (California, Connecticut, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Minnesota, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, and Washington). Ten states
* exempt breastfeeding mothers from jury duty (California, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska, Oklahoma Oregon and Virginia).Four states:
* have implemented or encouraged the development of a breastfeeding awareness education campaign (California, Illinois, Missouri, and Vermont).
Several states have unique laws related to breastfeeding. For instance,
* California and Texas have laws related to the procurement, processing, distribution or use of human milk.
* Louisiana prohibits any child care facility from discriminating against breastfed babies.
* Maine requires courts, when awarding parental rights and responsibilities with respect to a child, to consider whether the child is under age one, and being breastfed.
* Maryland exempts from the sales and use tax the sale of tangible personal property that is manufactured for the purpose of initiating, supporting or sustaining breastfeeding.
* Rhode Island requires the Department of Health to prepare a consumer mercury alert notice, explaining the danger of eating mercury-contaminated fish to women who are pregnant or breastfeeding their children.
A very useful summary of pertinent statutes, with links, follows.
Update: Feminist Law Prof Jessica Silbey mentioned in the comments, and it seemed worthwhile adding here, that Rebecca Johnson wrote an article entitled “Bars, Breasts, Babies: Justice L’Heureux-Dube and the Boundaries of Belonging” that might be of interest.
Professor Rebecca Johnson, on the Faculty of Law and the University of Victoria, has written several interesting articles on the construction of the mother in the law around breastfeeding. See, e.g., her article “Bars, Breasts, Babies…” at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=576422.
This is a great resource. Having been a nursing mom in Illinois and Alabama, I would have really liked to have known about this before moving. I hadn’t realized how progressive Illinois was in its policies. Additionally, this is a really great area for research–milk banks raise public health and ethics issues (plus more I’m sure), employment policies are implicated, as are criminal and tort laws. In fact, I’m surprised that there hasn’t been more of a flood on this topic.
Pingback: Feminist Law Professors » Blog Archive » How To Exploit A Naked Breast