Opinion ID: 3036509
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Pallas v. Pacific Bell

Text: We turn finally to the question of Pallas v. Pacific Bell, 940 F.2d 1324 (9th Cir. 1991), and its relationship to the outcome in this case. The trial court rested its judgment in plaintiffs’ favor on this circuit’s decision in Pallas, which on similar facts ruled the pre-PDA calculations non-compliant. The Pallas case arose when, in 1987, Pacific Bell instituted a new retirement benefit for management employees called the Early Retirement Opportunity. Plaintiff, otherwise eligible for the benefit, was denied the benefit because under the employer’s NCS system (the same system as in this case) she was several days short of the necessary service credit required to obtain the benefit. She had had a pregnancy-related leave in 1972, which under the rules in effect then (pre-PDA) was treated as a personal leave; had it been credited as other disability leaves, she would have been eligible for the retirement benefit. Pallas sued her employer to get the missing credit. The district court dismissed her suit as time-barred—the relevant action, the pregnancy leave, had occurred in 1972 and this was now some fifteen years later. This court on appeal reversed, holding that it was not time-barred: In 1987, Pacific Bell instituted a program that adopted, and thereby perpetuated, acts of discrimina- 8 Accord Ameritech Benefit Plan Comm. v. Comm’n Workers of Am., 220 F.3d 814 (7th Cir. 2000). HULTEEN v. AT&T CORP. 2309 tion which occurred prior to the enactment of the [PDA]. While the act of discriminating against Pallas in 1972 is not, itself, actionable, Pacific Bell is liable for its decision to discriminate against Pallas in 1987 on the basis of pregnancy. Pallas’ complaint states a valid claim under Title VII. Pallas, 940 F.2d at 1327. Thus it would appear that Pacific Bell’s 1987 use of the 1972 pregnancy leave accounting constituted a new and current violation of Title VII. For the reasons explained above, that necessarily implicates a retroactive application of the 1979 PDA. Stating with certainty the basis for the Pallas result is made awkward by the fact that the court did not address the underlying retroactive effect it had given to the PDA. Of course, Pallas was decided before the Supreme Court’s decision in Landgraf, and neither the parties nor the court had the benefit of that clarification of retroactivity law. The Pallas court did cite and discuss with favor the decision by the Supreme Court in Bazemore v. Friday. For the reasons explained earlier, we do not believe Bazemore is the correct analogy for the case before us. The Supreme Court in Bazemore focused on the pay disparities that remained after the enactment of Title VII: “Each week’s paycheck that delivers less to a black than to a similarly situated white is a wrong actionable under Title VII, regardless of the fact that this pattern was begun prior to the effective date of Title VII.” 478 U.S. at 395-96. In this case there is no ongoing “pattern or practice” to be pointed to, and no current continuing violation.