To feed her baby breast milk or keep her job: A Manhattan receptionist said she was forced to make that choice… Only then did she learn state law requires employers with 15 or more staff to allow mothers to pump breast milk for up to three years -- in a private, sanitary space that is not a bathroom. She contacted attorney Naomi Shatz with the New York Civil Liberties Union. "It seems very clear to us that they fired her because she asserted her right to pump," Shatz said.