Woman Sues Bookstore Over Right to Breast-Feed

A Los Feliz woman filed suit against Borders Books & Music on Wednesday, charging the store’s management and staff with denying her right to breast-feed her 3-month-old daughter inside the store.

The store’s general manager apologized for the incident.

Kerry Madden-Lunsford, an author who has done book signings at the Glendale store and other Borders locations, and her attorney, Paula D. Pearlman, of the California Women’s Law Center in Los Angeles, held a news conference in front of the store Wednesday to announce the filing of the suit.

Pearlman and Madden-Lunsford said the store violated a 1998 state law allowing women to breast-feed in public. No damages were specified.

Madden-Lunsford said she was sitting in the children’s book section March 6 breast-feeding her daughter, Norah, under her sweater when a store clerk told her that a customer complained the breast-feeding had upset her 7-year-old son.

Madden-Lunsford said she was then told by a store manager, “You can’t do that in here,” and offered the options of nursing Norah in the bathroom or leaving the store.

“The law is very clear,” Pearlman said. “A woman cannot be barred from breast-feeding in public, it’s that simple.”

“I was shocked,” said Madden-Lunsford, whose first-person account of the incident appeared in The Times on Wednesday. “A nursing mother has the right to feed her infant when the baby is hungry, whether she is at home or at a bookstore.”

Diana Villicanna, the store’s general manager, also present at the news conference, issued an apology to Madden-Lunsford and Pearlman. She said the two store employees were unaware of the law, that the store does not have a “no breast-feeding policy,” and that the two employees have since been “re-educated.”

Following the news conference, Borders posted signs that state, “Feel free to breast-feed your baby.”