The Pregnancy Discrimination Act requires an employer to accommodate a pregnant employee as the employer accommodates other employees "similar in their ability or inability to work" the Supreme Court ruled today in Young v. UPS. The Court's 6-3 ruling reinstated Peggy Young's suit while remanding the case to the Fourth Circuit.
The Court's opinion outlined the parameters of a pregnancy discrimination case. At the initial stage, a pregnant employee must prove that she belongs to the protected class (which means that she is pregnant), that she sought accommodation (that for some pregnancy-related reason she requested some alteration of her job duties or tasks), that the employer did not accommodate her, and that the employer did accommodate others “similar in their ability or inability to work.” This doesn't require much: the Court again emphasized that this burden is "not onerous."
This requires the employer to come up with some passably legitimate explanation for not accommodating the pregnant employee. But the employer's reason, the Court stated, must consist of more than "simply of a claim that it is more expensive or less convenient to add pregnant women to the category of those ('similar in their ability or inability to work') whom the employer accommodates."
But of course it does not end there, the pregnant employee must demonstrate the employer's explanation to be largely nonsense, to be pretextual in the lexicon of employment discrimination litigation. This is done by "sufficient evidence that the employer's policies impose a significant burden on pregnant workers, and that the employer's 'legitimate, nondiscriminatory' reasons are not sufficiently strong to justify the burden, but rather -- when considered along with the burden imposed -- give rise to an inference of intentional discrimination." Young had done so with proof that UPS accommodated most employees who had restrictions because of some reason other than pregnancy but did not accommodate any pregnant employees.
Robert L. Abell
www.RobertAbellLaw.com
