What if the public breastfeeding law has no enforcement provision?
Most state laws protecting the right to breastfeed outside the home do not have enforcement provisions. However, this does not mean that there is nothing a nursing mother or her supporters can do. In a heart-wrenching incident last April, Jessica Swimeley was told to stop nursing her 17-month-old son, Tobin, in a common area of the Ronald McDonald House of Houston, Texas.9 What made this story particularly compelling was that Tobin and his family were staying in the House because Tobin was recovering from surgery to remove a brain tumor. According to his family, he was in such great postsurgical pain that breastmilk was all that he could consume and nursing was his only comfort. Although the facility later denied it, Tobin’s family insist that they were told by the Ronald McDonald House administration that they would be evicted from the facility if they refused to comply with what was called an “oral guideline” forbidding breastfeeding anywhere other than in the family’s private room—i