Ten-week dismissal shield after miscarriage, annulment made mandatory

An employee who suffers a medically established spontaneous termination of pregnancy between the 14th and 21st week of amenorrhoea inclusive now benefits from relative protection against dismissal for the ten weeks that followService Public. During that window the employer may dismiss her only for serious misconduct unrelated to the miscarriage or where it is impossible to maintain the contractService Public for a reason unconnected with it. The protection sits alongside the two existing relative-protection periods — from notification of pregnancy until maternity leave begins, and for ten weeks after maternity leave or the paid leave taken immediately after it — and the absolute ban on dismissal during maternity leave, related pathological leave and immediately following paid leave remains unchanged.

The sanctions for dismissing within a protection period are also restated as mandatoryService Public. A dismissal pronounced in breach of the protection periods is annulledService Public; the employee seizes the conseil de prud'hommes, and if she asks for it she is reinstated in the company, reinstatement being refused only where it is impossibleService Public, for example where the business has ceased activity. Previously the guidance presented annulment and reinstatement as possibilitiesService Public. The procedural route is unchanged: an employee dismissed by an employer unaware of her pregnancy sends a medical certificate by registered letter within fifteen days of notification to obtain annulment, unless the dismissal rests on serious misconduct or impossibility of maintaining the contractService Public.

In practice, employers treat any medically documented miscarriage in the 14th-to-21st-week window as opening a ten-week relative-protection period with the same limited dismissal grounds as pregnancy itself, and HR teams update dismissal checklists: a dismissal inside any protection period no longer risks annulment as a possibility but produces it, with reinstatement on the employee's request unless objectively impossibleService Public.

Legal basis: code du travail articles L1225-4 (pregnancy protection periods and limited grounds), L1225-4-3 created by loi n° 2023-567 du 7 juillet 2023 article 3 (ten-week protection after spontaneous termination between the 14th and 21st week of amenorrhoea), and L1225-5 (annulment on production of the medical certificate within fifteen days).