Under Ohio state law, public establishments – including restaurants and retail stores – must allow mothers to breastfeed their children. But one woman says a Pizza Hut restaurant she visited didn’t follow that rule and asked her to leave when she started nursing her child.
The woman says she was out to dinner with her husband and had just started nursing her 3-month old son when an employee of the restaurant asked her to cover up, Cleveland 19 reports.
When the mother said she wouldn’t cover up with a blanket, that she was wearing two shirts and covered as best she could, the employee allegedly asked her to move to another area of the restaurant.
“She said ‘well could I get you to move to a private booth because we have some parents here who don’t want to expose their children to that,’” the woman recalls, noting that they told the server that it was her legal right to breastfeed her son in public.
When she once again declined the employee’s request, she says she was asked to leave.
The local Pizza Hut issued a statement to Cleveland 19 apologizing for the situation, but saying the woman was never asked to leave.
“Pizza Hut fully supports state law regarding a mother’s right to breastfeed in our restaurants. While this customer was not asked to leave the restaurant, but rather offered another table with greater privacy, we deeply apologize that this situation in anyway upset her or if she felt mistreated. We will take this as an opportunity to further train our employees.”
While the mother maintains that she was indeed asked to leave, she just wants to make sure no one else is embarrassed by a similar situation.
“Stick up for yourself, stick up for your rights. I’m not just doing this for myself I’m doing this for all breastfeeding mothers,” she tells Cleveland 19.
This is the second breastfeeding incident to occur in Ohio in as many weeks. Last week, a mother says she was asked to leave the Western Reserve Historical Society’s Cleveland History Center — the location of her sister’s wedding — while she was nursing her 9-month-old son.
As always, we point you to this handy reference list from the National Conference of State Legislatures with links to each state’s relevant laws on nursing in public (Hint: It’s allowed).
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