Courtney Leyes' article "Pregnancy Discrimination and Light Duty Policies: the Supreme Court Changes the Rules" was featured in HR Professionals Magazine on May 5, 2015.
In 2006, our firm represented the employer in a lawsuit and subsequent appeal when the plaintiff employee had been fired when she was pregnant, because, as a fairly new employee, she had no Family Medical Leave Act leave and no leave available under the employer's leave policies, and the employer refused her request for light duty since she had suffered no job-related injury. Both the Memphis federal judge and the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with us that the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA) just meant that employers had to treat pregnant employees the same as other employees with illnesses, i.e., there was no windfall for pregnant employees under the Act. Reeves v. Swift Transportation, 446 F.3d 637 (6th Cir. 2006).
Our client prevailed in that case, but would the company prevailed today? Well, in March, the U.S. Supreme Court reached an opposite conclusion with similar facts than our prior case. Young v. UPS, No. 12-1226 (Mar. 25, 2015). In this new precedent, UPS's policy limited light-duty accommodations to three classes of employees regardless of whether they had sought light duty for pregnancy. According to the Supreme Court, the plaintiff had sufficiently demonstrated that there was a real fact dispute as to whether the employer had unreasonably treated other non-pregnant employees more favorably. Id.
In the article, Courtney discusses how companies should apply the Supreme Court's Ruling in the Young V. UPS case, in the workplace.
The issue addressed by the Court was limited to whether UPS' light-duty policy, but could the decision later be applied to other employer policies as well? Could pregnant workers get a windfall, as the ADA does for disabled employees? Pregnant employees may or may not now have "most favored nation" status among impaired workers—that is still unclear. Most Americans likely would not argue against the concept that employers ought to give some sort of windfall or protected status to pregnant employees because of their pregnancy, but we also must be honest enough to admit that there will be a financial cost to employers for such a rule, making it yet more difficult for US companies to compete globally with their products. In the meantime, Courtney advises companies to examine their policies that might impose greater burdens on pregnant workers. If a policy accommodates only limited classes of workers, it could be wise to also consider how pregnant workers could reasonably be accommodated.
To read the full article, please visit HR Professionals Magazine.
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