Opinion ID: 775824
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Legislative History and Discrimination in Granting Leave

Text: 43 Alternatively, we also hold that the legislative history of the FMLA contains substantial evidence of gender discrimination with respect to the granting of leave to state employees, and that it therefore justifies the enactment of the FMLA as a prophylactic measure. 44 The FMLA's legislative history reflects that a 1990 Bureau of Labor Statistics (the BLS) survey found that 37 percent of surveyed private-sector employees were covered bymaternity leave policies, while only 18 percent were covered by paternity leave policies. S. Rep. No. 103-3, at 14-15, reprinted in 1993 U.S.C.C.A.N. 3, 17. The numbers from a similar BLS survey the previous year were 33 percent and 16 percent, respectively. Id. Thus, while these data show that a larger percentage of employees were covered in 1990 than in 1989, they also show a widening of the gender gap in leave policy during the same period. In addition, while the BLS surveyed only private employers, an extensive study of the private and public sectors done by the Yale Bush Center Infant Care Leave Project revealed that [t]he proportion and construction of leave policies available to public sector employees differs little from those offered private sector employees. The Parental and Medical Leave Act of 1986: Joint Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Labor-Management Relations and the Subcommittee on Labor Standards of the Committee on Education and Labor, 99th Cong. 33 (1986) (prepared statement of Meryl Frank, Director of the Yale Bush Center Infant Care Leave Project); see also id. at 29-30 (We did a survey of the public sector, a survey of Federal employees, all 50 States, and of the military. We have studied small businesses, mid-size businesses and large businesses to find out what they are offering. . . . We found that public sector leaves don't vary very much from private sector leaves.) (testimony of Meryl Frank, Director of the Yale Bush Center Infant Care Leave Project). 45 Taken together, the BLS and Yale Bush Center surveys constitute substantial evidence of unconstitutional state-sponsored gender discrimination in leave policies for state employees. The studies show significant gender-based disparities in the coverage of state leave policies . They thus indicate widespread intentional gender discrimination by states. Moreover, the studies show that this discrimination has persisted despite the existence of 42 U.S.C. §§ 1983 and Title VII, long after the 1978 enactment of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act made discrimination on the basis of pregnancy an actionable form of gender discrimination under Title VII. Altogether then, the studies show that states' discriminatory leave policies are just the sort of difficult and intractable problem that justifies broad prophylactic measures in response. 46 We recognize that a weakness in this evidence as applied to Hibbs' case is that the BLS and Yale Bush Center studies deal only with parental leave, not with leave to care for a sick family member. They thus do not document a widespread pattern of precisely the kind of discrimination that §§ 2612(a)(1)(C) is intended to prevent. But the studies do nonetheless constitute strong circumstantial evidence of statesponsored gender discrimination in the granting of leave to care for a sick family member, because if states discriminate along gender lines regarding the one kind of leave, then they are likely to do so regarding the other. 47 Here again, the fact that the FMLA is aimed at remedying gender discrimination, rather than discrimination with respect to a non-suspect classification, informs our analysis. Because the heightened scrutiny applied to state-sponsored gender discrimination reflects judicial recognition of the fact that persons who suffer discrimination on the basis of gender have been subjected to a history of purposeful unequal treatment, Kimel, 528 U.S. at 83, we conclude that courts have more latitude in drawing inferences from the legislative history of a federal statute aimed at remedying state-sponsored gender discrimination than in drawing inferences from the histories of statutes like the ADA and the ADEA, which aim to remedy discrimination with respect to non-suspect classifications. For this reason, we conclude that the evidence in the FMLA's legislative history is sufficient to justify Congress' broad use of its section 5 power in enacting §§ 2612(a)(1)(C). On this basis as well, then, we hold that Congress validly exercised its section 5 power when it gave state employees the right to sue their employers for violations of §§ 2612(a)(1)(C). 11 48