Pregnancy, disability, and maternity leaves

Description: Federal and employer-sponsored policies used primarily by working women for childbirth and disability related to childbirth.

Significance: Although from the early 1900s through the mid-1970s, the Supreme Court approved of the differential treatment of pregnant women, in 1982, it upheld the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1977.

The historical treatment of pregnant working women stems from the traditional societal attitude that a woman's role is exclusively one of wife and mother. As women began entering the workforce during the Industrial Revolution, many states attempted to protect women from the unhealthy working conditions existing at that time. States enacted statutes that attempted to shield women by limiting hours of work, specifying maximum weights to be lifted, and prohibiting them from performing certain types of work.

In Muller v. Oregon (1908), the Supreme Court upheld an Oregon statute prohibiting the employment of women for more than ten hours a day in any factory or laundry. By this ruling, the Court endorsed laws restricting the employment of women only as permissible for everyone’s benefit. Justice David J. Brewer, speaking for the Court, stated: “That a woman’s physical structure and the performance of maternal functions place her at a disadvantage in the struggle for subsistence is obvious.… As healthy mothers are essential to vigorous offspring, the physical well-being of women becomes an object of public interest and care in order to preserve the strength and vigor of the race.”

In the 1920s, the number of working women grew; however, no legislation protected the rights of pregnant workers or working mothers. Most women workers assumed that childbearing responsibilities would remove them from the workplace. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, the public rejected the idea of working mothers. However, World War II created a worker shortage, and nearly one-third of the female population over the age of fourteen, mothers included, worked outside the home. After the end of the war in 1945, many of these working women lost their high-paying union jobs to returning veterans. In the 1950s, many women chose to be homemakers rather than to join the workforce; however, in the 1960s and 1970s, many women entered the workforce, and more women chose to keep working after pregnancy and childbirth.

Women’s Work and Maternity Leave

In Cleveland Board of Education v. LaFleur (1974), the Court held that mandatory maternity leaves for schoolteachers, which required a woman to begin maternity leave without regard to her ability to work, were unconstitutional under the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. However, that same year, in Geduldig v. Aiello (1974), the Court determined that exclusion of pregnancy from disability insurance plans did not violate the due process clause and did not involve gender discrimination because pregnancy is a “condition.” Further, in General Electric v. Gilbert (1976), the Court accepted the Geduldig rationale that disparate treatment of pregnant women did not always constitute sex discrimination.

The General Electric decision prompted a broad coalition of activists to lobby for legislation protecting the rights of pregnant women. The Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA) was passed in March 1977 to amend Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to include pregnancy-related disability. The act required that employers treat pregnancy like any other physical condition.

In California Federal Savings and Loan Association v. Guerra (1987), the Court ruled on a California state law that required employers to grant up to four months’ unpaid pregnancy disability leave. A receptionist for the savings and loan took her statutorily entitled pregnancy leave, but her employer filled her position, preventing her from returning to work. The savings and loan fought the California law, stating that it was preempted by Title VII. The Court upheld the California law, finding the act “to be a floor beneath which pregnancy disability benefits may not drop, not a ceiling above which they may not rise.” The Court ruled that employers must give women disability leave for pregnancy and childbirth and that they must guarantee them reinstatement to their jobs. This “special treatment,” it ruled, was permitted by Title VII’s legislative history.

In 1993 Congress passed the Family and Medical Leave Act, which allows parents (mother and father) to take up to twelve work weeks of unpaid leave for the birth and care of a newborn child and return to their previous position. The act entitles workers to take a leave for “health conditions.” These conditions are usually related to extended illness, workers’ compensation claims, or terminal disease and do not specifically include pregnancy; however, nothing in the act excludes the taking of medical leave if a woman is unable to work or is medically incapacitated by pregnancy. The Court did not rule on the constitutionality of this act in the 1990s.

In 2003 the Supreme Court ruled on the case of Nevada Department of Human Resources v. Hibbs, in which a public employee, William Hibbs, had been fired after taking unpaid leave under FMLA and sued the state for damages, despite the state's immunity from suit in federal court under the Eleventh Amendment. The Court, in an opinion delivered by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, found that employees could bring suit against states for FMLA violations. Though Hibbs was male and took leave to care for his ailing wife, the decision has implications for anyone taking FMLA leave for any reason, including women who do so for pregnancy-related medical problems or for childcare reasons. In AT&T Corp v. Hulteen (2009), a woman brought suit against AT&T because they had made deductions from her pension based on unpaid maternity leave that she had taken in the 1960s, prior to the PDA; by the standards laid out in the PDA, AT&T's maternity leave policy at the time was discriminatory, but as the policy had been legal at the time, the Court held that AT&T's pension calculation was not in violation of the PDA and Title VII, essentially finding that the PDA did not apply retroactively.

In 2015, the Court ruled in favor of the plaintiff in Young v. United Parcel Service (UPS), saying her rights had been violated under the PDA. UPS refused to accommodate Young’s restriction on how much weight she could lift during pregnancy. As a result, the Court ruled Young could sue the company for discrimination under the PDA.

Bibliography

"AT&T Corp. v. Hulteen." Oyez. Chicago-Kent College of Law at Illinois Tech, n.d. Web. 14 Jan. 2016.

Blank, Robert. Fetal Protection in the Workplace: Women’s Rights, Business Interests, and the Unborn. New York: Columbia UP, 1993. Print.

Crampton, Suzanne, and Jitendra Mishra. “Family and Medical Leave Legislation: Organizational Policies and Strategies.” Public Personnel Management. 24.3 (1995): 271. Print.

Dhalla, Aleem A. “SCOTUS Issues Ruling on Pregnancy-Discrimination Case.” American Bar Association, 17 June 2015, americanbar.org/groups/litigation/committees/corporate-counsel/practice/2015/scotus-issues-ruling-on-pregnancy-discrimination-case/. Accessed 5 Apr. 2023.

Gordon, Victoria. Maternity Leave: Policy and Practice. Boca Raton: CRC, 2013. Print.

Merrick, Janna, and Robert Blank. The Politics of Pregnancy: Policy Dilemmas in the Maternal-Fetal Relationship. New York: Haworth, 1993. Print.

Taylor, Stephen, and Astra Emir. Employment Law: An Introduction. 4th ed. New York: Oxford UP, 2015. Print.