Source: https://case-law.vlex.com/vid/414-u-s-632-606796850
Timestamp: 2019-04-23 21:49:35+00:00

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continuing her duties, whereas any such teacher's ability to continue past a fixed pregnancy period is an individual matter, and the school boards' administrative convenience alone cannot suffice to validate the arbitrary rules. Pp. 643-648.
STEWART, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which BRENNAN, WHITE, MARSHALL, and BLACKMUN, JJ., joined. DOUGLAS, J., concurred in the result. POWELL, J., filed an opinion concurring in the result, post, p. 651. REHNQUIST, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which BURGER, C.J., joined, post, p. 657.
The respondents in No. 72-777 and the Petitioner in No. 72-1129 are female public school teachers. During the 1970-1971 school year, each informed her local school board that she was pregnant; each was compelled by a mandatory maternity leave rule to quit her job without pay several months before the [94 S.Ct. 794] expected birth of her child. These cases call upon us to decide the constitutionality of the school boards' rules.
Mrs. Cohen informed the Chesterfield County School Board in November, 1970, that she was pregnant and expected the birth of her child about April 8, 1971.6 She initially requested that she be permitted to continue teaching until April 1, 1971.7 The school board rejected the request, as it did Mrs. Cohen's subsequent suggestion that she be allowed to teach until January 21, 1971, the end of the first school semester. Instead, she was required to leave her teaching job on December 18, 1970. She subsequently filed this suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. The District Court held that the school board regulation violates the Equal Protection Clause, and granted appropriate relief. 326 F.Supp. 1159. A divided panel of the Fourth Circuit affirmed, but, on rehearing en banc, the Court of Appeals upheld the constitutionality of the challenged regulation in a 4-3 decision. 474 F.2d 395.
of the Fourteenth Amendment. Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113; Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1, 12; Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479; Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510; Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390. See also Prince v. Massachusetts, 321 U.S. 158; Skinner v. Oklahoma, 316 U.S. 535. As we noted in Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. 438, 453, there is a right "to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or beget a child."

References: § 1983
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