This is an actual reason for feminism to exist, rather than the mostly irrelevant stuff you see from SJWs. breast-feeding cannot be considered sex discrimination, because men can, in theory, lactate, too.
Could she have argued that this was less healthy for her child? I don't know much about male lactation but I'd guess it's not as good for the baby as female breast milk.
She never went to her HR department? This is exactly where you go when you have situations like this occur. I'm playing devils advocate here, but someone that isn't resourceful enough to do that, may not be the ideal employee. Let's not forget that sometimes a shitty employee that was already on the way out can get pregnant and this presents a difficult situation for their leaders etc. However, regarding the ruling being based on men having the ability to lactate, that's fucking ridiculous. Also, women should absolutely be allowed to pump beast milk in private. It only takes about 15 minutes and you lose less time from an employee that's a smoker etc. it's important stuff and any organization that doesn't understand this and denies it, should be held accountable.
It depends, HR doesn't exist to solve problems or mitigate tension at work. Those are things they happen to do. HR exists for exactly one purpose, and that is to save the company money, and their conflict mitigation duties are there for the sole purpose of ensuring that the company doesn't incur legal penalties. HR can be very destructive to a woman's career if they determine that the basis of the woman's complaint doesn't meet a standard of inappropriate behavior by the person or department who's been accused of wrongdoing. If I were a woman, seeing what I've seen over the years, I'd be damn hesitant to complain anything to HR.