Opinion ID: 748182
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: background of the pregnancy discrimination act

Text: 38 Title VII makes it an unlawful employment practice for an employer 39 to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual's ... sex 40 § 2000e-2(a)(1). Congress created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to implement Title VII and the EEOC developed guidelines through which employers and employees could better understand the protections afforded under Title VII. Those guidelines implemented the Title VII prohibition of sex discrimination, H.R.Rep. No. 95-948, at 2 (1978), reprinted in 1978 U.S.C.C.A.N. 4749, 4752, and they expressly extend the protection of Title VII to conditions caused by pregnancy. 41 Disabilities caused or contributed to by pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions, for all job related purposes, shall be treated the same as disabilities caused or contributed to by other medical conditions.... Written or unwritten employment policies and practices involving matters such as the commencement and duration of leave, the availability of extensions, the accrual of seniority and other benefits and privileges, reinstatement, and payment under any health or disability insurance or sick leave plan, formal or informal, shall be applied to disability due to pregnancy, childbirth or related medical conditions on the same terms and conditions as they are applied to other disabilities.... 42 29 C.F.R. § 1604.10(b). The guidelines also contain an interpretive question and answer section in which the following exchange is made: 43 Q: Must an employer hold open the job of an employee who is absent on leave because she is temporarily disabled by pregnancy-related conditions? 44 A: Unless the employee on leave has informed the employer that she does not intend to return to work, her job must be held open for her return on the same basis as jobs are held open for employees on sick or disability leave for other reasons. 45 29 C.F.R. pt. 1604, app. Question 9. The majority concludes that this means that Carnegie Center Associates (Carnegie) can terminate Rhett for her absence, even though it is caused by pregnancy, so long as Carnegie would have terminated an absent employee who was not pregnant. See Maj. Op. at 295-296. 46 However, the circumstances leading to Title VII's current proscriptions against sex discrimination undermine the majority's analysis. Title VII, as originally enacted, did not explicitly define sex discrimination to include disparate treatment based upon, or related to, pregnancy. As a result, some courts adopted a narrow view of the extent to which Title VII's proscription against sexual discrimination included disparate treatment based upon pregnancy and related conditions. In General Electric v. Gilbert, 429 U.S. 125, 97 S.Ct. 401, 50 L.Ed.2d 343 (1976), the Supreme Court held that an insurance plan that excluded coverage for pregnancy-related disabilities did not constitute illegal gender-based discrimination. There, an employer's disability plan provided coverage for nonoccupational sickness and accidents, but excluded coverage for pregnancy and pregnancy-related disabilities. The plan did, though, include coverage for nonoccupational disabilities and medical procedures common to men, e.g. prostatectomies, vasectomies and circumcisions. Gilbert, 429 U.S. at 145-46, 97 S.Ct. at 412-13. A group of employees sued under Title VII, alleging that the insurance plan was illegal sexual discrimination because it excluded a class of disabilities unique to women. The district court held that the plan did constitute illegal sex discrimination in violation of Title VII and the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed. However, prior to the decision of the court of appeals, but subsequent to the decision of the district court, the Supreme Court decided Geduldig v. Aiello, 417 U.S. 484, 94 S.Ct. 2485, 41 L.Ed.2d 256 (1974). 47 In Geduldig, the Supreme Court upheld the validity of a nearly identical insurance policy against an attack under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court in Geduldig reasoned that the challenged policy was simply a business decision as to which risks an employer would insure. The program divides potential recipients into two groups pregnant women and nonpregnant persons. While the first group is exclusively female, the second includes members of both sexes. Geduldig, 417 U.S. at 496-97 n. 20, 94 S.Ct. at 2492 n. 20. The Court in Gilbert upheld the challenged disability plan based upon its earlier holding in Geduldig. The Court reasoned that, even though Geduldig was based upon an equal protection argument, and Gilbert was brought under Title VII, the logic of Geduldig still applied. Accordingly, the Court held that since there was no risk from which women were protected and men were not and no risk from which men were protected that women were not, the exclusion of pregnancy related disabilities did not invalidate the Gilbert policy under Title VII. The majority minimized the relevance of the EEOC guidelines when considering what Congress intended under Title VII. 48 Justice Brennan dissented, arguing that the Court's analysis was simplistic and misleading because the plan included procedures that were specific to men while excluding pregnancy-related procedures that were unique to women. 429 U.S. at 152, 97 S.Ct. at 416 (Brennan, J., dissenting). He noted that pregnancy affords the only disability, sex specific, or otherwise, that is excluded from coverage. Id. Accordingly, he did not think that the classification could be saved from a finding of illegal discrimination under Title VII merely because it was a facially neutral classification. Id. at 155, 97 S.Ct. at 417. He concluded that the Court erred in accepting the employer's explanation that the plan merely excluded certain risks from coverage in a nondiscriminatory way. [T]he demonstration of purposeful discrimination is not the only ground for recovery under Title VII....[A] prima facie violation of Title VII ... also is established by demonstrating that a facially neutral classification has the effect of discriminating against members of a defined class. Id. at 153-55, 97 S.Ct. at 416-17. 49 According to Justice Brennan, the determinative question must be whether the social policies and aims to be furthered by Title VII and filtered through the phrase 'to discriminate' contained in § 703(a)(1) fairly forbid an ultimate pattern of coverage that insures all risks except a commonplace one that is applicable to women but not to men. Id. at 155, 97 S.Ct. at 418. He noted that the Court had previously recognized that discrimination is a social phenomenon encased in a social context and therefore, unavoidably takes its meaning from the desired end products of the relevant legislative enactment, end products that may demand due consideration to the uniqueness of 'disadvantaged' individuals. Id. at 159, 97 S.Ct. at 419. (discussing Lau v. Nichols, 414 U.S. 563, 94 S.Ct. 786, 39 L.Ed.2d 1 (1974)) (emphasis added). Justice Brennan concluded that the EEOC guidelines were reasonable responses to the uniform testimony of governmental investigations which show that pregnancy exclusions built into disability programs both financially burden women workers and act to break down the continuity of the employment relationship, thereby exacerbating women's comparatively transient role in the labor force. Id. at 158, 97 S.Ct. at 419. Justice Brennan believed that the EEOC guidelines, [i]n dictating pregnancy coverage under Title VII, had merely settled upon a solution now accepted by every other Western industrial country. Id. (citing Dept. of Health, Education, and Welfare, Social Security Programs Throughout the World, (Research Project No. 40) pp. ix, xviii, xix (1971)). 1 Congress reacted to Gilbert by enacting the Pregnancy Discrimination Act. See Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Co. v. EEOC, 462 U.S. 669, 678, 103 S.Ct. 2622, 2628, 77 L.Ed.2d 89 (1983). That act amended the Definitions section of Title VII in part as follows: 50 The terms 'because of sex' or 'on the basis of sex' include, but are not limited to, because of or on the basis of pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions; and women affected by pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions shall be treated the same for all employment-related purposes ... as other persons not so affected but similar in their ability or inability to work.... 51 42 U.S.C. § 2000e(k). 52 When Congress amended Title VII in 1978, it unambiguously expressed its disapproval of both the holding and the reasoning of the Court in the Gilbert decision.... The House Report stated, 'It is the Committee's view that the dissenting Justices correctly interpreted the Act.' Similarly, the Senate Report quoted passages from the two dissenting opinions, stating that they 'correctly express both the principle and the meaning of Title VII.'Newport News, 462 U.S. at 678, 103 S.Ct. at 2628. (citing H.R.Rep. No. 95-948 and S.Rep. No. 95-331, at 2-3 (1977), U.S. Code Cong. & Admin. News at 4750-51). 53