Opinion ID: 748182
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: TROUPE v. MAY DEP'T STORES CO.

Text: 75 In Troupe, pregnant employee Kimberly Hern Troupe was fired from a Lord & Taylor department store for tardiness due to pregnancy. Troupe sued her employer, May Department Stores (doing business as Lord & Taylor), alleging illegal sex discrimination under Title VII. The district court granted Lord & Taylor's motion for summary judgment and Troupe appealed. On appeal, the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit affirmed, noting that [t]he great, the undeniable fact is the plaintiff's tardiness. Id. at 737. The court analogized the plaintiff's plight to that of a hypothetical Black employee who is fired after a kidney transplant because the employer either wants to avoid paying the employee while on sick leave or doubts that the employee will return. The court reasoned that, infiring the Black employee, the employer may be breaking a contract, but it would not be violating Title VII's protections against racial discrimination as long as the employer would also fire a similarly situated White employee. 3 Id. at 738. The failure of the Troupe analogy, however, is that absence from work is not endemic to a protected racial trait. Absence is, however, endemic to pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions. § 2000e(k). Indeed, the historical underpinnings of Title VII suggest that it was the fear that women would get pregnant and be absent from their jobs that was, at least in part, responsible for the longstanding discrimination against women (especially younger women) in the workplace. 76 As noted above, employers have assumed that female employees may become pregnant and that pregnancy would make them unavailable for work. See Gilbert, 429 U.S. at 150 n. 1, 97 S.Ct. at 415 n. 1 (Brennan, J., dissenting) (General Electric's disability program was developed in an earlier era when women openly were presumed to play only a minor and temporary role in the labor force. As originally conceived in 1926, General Electric offered no benefit plan to its female employees because 'women did not recognize the responsibilities in life, for they were probably hoping to get married soon and leave the company.' ) (quoting D. Loth, Swope, G.E.: Story of Gerard Swope and General Electric in American Business (1958)). Yet, here the majority finds that [i]t is not a violation of the PDA for an employer to consider an employee's absence on maternity leave in making an adverse employment decision if it also would have considered the absence of an employee on a different type of disability leave in the same way. Maj. Op. at 299. This is a simplistic interpretation of the PDA and the EEOC guidelines. In a different Title VII context, the Supreme Court noted that interpreting the prohibitions of Title VII to only prohibit overt intentional discrimination would leave employers free to enact facially neutral policies based on factors that were a proxy for race and thereby circumvent Title VII's protection. See Griggs v. Duke Power, 401 U.S. 424, 430, 91 S.Ct. 849, 853, 28 L.Ed.2d 158 (1971). The approach taken in Troupe, under the PDA, and adopted by the majority here, suffers from the same infirmity. 77 It is jurisprudential sleight of hand to suggest that the PDA does not require that pregnant women be treated better than their male counterpart. That is a misleading statement of the issue. Thus, the court in Troupe misses the analytical mark when it states that [e]mployers can treat pregnant women as badly as they treat similarly affected but nonpregnant employees, 20 F.3d at 738, unless it defines similarly affected employees as other employees having a protected trait that is endemic to the behavior at issue. However, Troupe fails to do so and assumes that the pregnant employee is the equal of her nonpregnant coworker. Similarly, the majority erroneously concludes that the PDA does not require that employers treat pregnant employees better than other temporarily disabled employees. See Maj. Op. at 296. 78 Relying upon Hazen Paper Company v. Biggins, 507 U.S. 604, 113 S.Ct. 1701, 123 L.Ed.2d 338 (1993), the majority states that [t]he Supreme Court has held that under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act an employer must ignore an employee's age in certain employment decisions, but not any other characteristics such as pension expense. Maj. Op. at 296. However, I believe that Hazen Paper requires that we reject Troupe. In Hazen Paper, a 62 year old employee sued his employer, alleging that he had been terminated based upon age discrimination, in violation of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), 29 U.S.C. § 626, and the Employment Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), 29 U.S.C. § 1140. A jury found for the employee on both claims, and the employee appealed. The Court of Appeals for the First Circuit affirmed, relying heavily on evidence that the plaintiff had been fired in order to prevent his pension from vesting. The court determined that the jury could have concluded that age was inextricably intertwined with the decision to fire[the plaintiff]. If it were not for [his] age ... his pension rights would not have been within a hairbreadth of vesting, 953 F.2d 1405, 1412 (1st Cir.1992), and he would not have been fired. The Supreme Court reversed as to the ADEA claim. The court reasoned that firing an older employee to prevent pension benefits from vesting based on years of service does not amount to willful age discrimination under the ADEA. 507 U.S. at 608, 113 S.Ct. at 1705. The Court stated, [W]e now clarify that there is no disparate treatment under the ADEA when the factor motivating the employer is some feature other than the employee's age. Id. at 609, 113 S.Ct. at 1705. The case before it was a disparate treatment case and the Court concluded that a disparate treatment claim cannot succeed unless the employee's protected trait actually played a role in that process and had a determinative influence on the outcome. Id. at 610, 113 S.Ct. at 1706. 79 Disparate treatment, thus defined, captures the essence of what Congress sought to prohibit in the ADEA. It is the very essence of age discrimination for an older employee to be fired because the employer believes that productivity and competence decline with old age.... 80 Thus the ADEA commands that 'employers are to evaluate [older] employees ... on their merits and not their age.' The employer cannot rely on age as a proxy for an employee's remaining characteristics, such as productivity, but must instead focus on those factors directly. 81 When the employer's decision is wholly motivated by factors other than age, the problem of inaccurate and stigmatizing stereotypes disappears. This is true even if the motivating factor is correlated with age, as pension status typically is.... Because age and years of service are analytically distinct, an employer can take account of one while ignoring the other, and thus it is incorrect to say that a decision based on years of service is necessarily 'age based.' 82 507 U.S. at 610-11, 113 S.Ct. at 1706-07. 83 Pregnancy and absence are not, however, analytically distinct, and an employer can not punish for the absence occasioned by pregnancy under Title VII. As noted above, that statute states that it is an unlawful employment practice to discharge any individual ... or otherwise discriminate ... because ... of sex, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(a)(1), and, after the PDA, that includes discrimination on the basis of pregnancy ... or related medical conditions. 42 U.S.C. § 2000e(k). That protection is meaningless unless it is intended to extend to the temporary absence from employment that is unavoidable in most pregnancies. Thus, the absence endemic to pregnancy, unlike factors that may sometimes be a proxy for age, has to be protected under the facts of this case. In Hazen Paper, it was the employee's years of service, not his age, that occasioned the vesting of his pension. The Court was very careful to note that 84 [W]e do not consider the special case where an employee is about to vest ... as a result of his age, rather than years of service, and the employer fires the employee in order to prevent vesting. That case is not presented here. Our holding is simply that an employer does not violate the ADEA just by interfering with an older employee's pension benefits that would have vested by virtue of years of service. 85 507 U.S. at 613, 113 S.Ct. at 1707-08. I believe that Rhett's situation under the PDA is much closer to the situation of an employee whose pension is vesting because of age than to the plight of the plaintiff in Hazen Paper. Accordingly, the holding in Hazen Paper does not assist the majority nearly as much as first appears. 4 86 [I]n using the broad phrase 'women affected by pregnancy, childbirth and related medical conditions,' the [PDA] makes clear that its protection extends to the whole range of matters concerning the childbearing process. H.R. Rep. 95-948, U.S. Code Cong. & Admin. News at 4749 (emphasis added). The holding in Troupe, and the majority's holding here, remove a substantial portion of the protection Congress intended. Troupe's position was terminated because of conditions related to pregnancy (tardiness occasioned by her morning sickness). I do not understand, therefore, why she was not terminated because of ... her pregnancy, § 2000e(k), in violation of Title VII. 87 I believe that we should reject the holding in Troupe, and adopt instead the analysis set forth in Smith, 76 F.3d 413. There, a female employee (Smith) worked for a small company that was undergoing restructuring. She informed the owner of the company that she was pregnant and would be taking maternity leave. Although the company had no maternity leave policy, Smith was assured that her job was secure and the company would simply divide her duties amongst its remaining employees in her absence. The company made this commitment even though it expected her absence to cause the sky to fall. Id. at 418. The company also held regular reality check meetings in the hope that they could minimize the impact of the absence of such a key employee. However, to the company's great surprise the sky did not fall. In fact, the plant functioned very well, id. at 419, in Smith's absence. Soon after Smith gave birth, she informed the general manager, Maryann Guimond, that she wished to return to work a week earlier than planned. At that time, Guimond made inquiries of Smith and Smith's sister (who also worked for the company) regarding Smith's plans to have children in the future. Days later, Guimond determined that Smith's position was superfluous and eliminated it. Smith's duties were then given to another employee who had been functioning as the operations manager. 88 Smith sued, alleging, among other things, violation of Title VII. The Title VII claim was decided in a bench trial in the district court, and that court entered judgment for the employer as a matter of law. Smith appealed, and the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit affirmed. Smith argued that the company had violated Title VII because her absence on pregnancy leave afforded the company the opportunity to learn that it could afford to eliminate her position. The court disagreed because it concluded that the employer would have eliminated the position regardless of Smith's pregnancy, and agreed with the employer's argument that even if Smith had not been on maternity leave she would have been flattened by the downsizing steamroller. Id. at 419. The court reasoned that 89 [T]here is little doubt that an employer, consistent with its business judgment, may eliminate positions during the course of a downsizing without violating Title VII even though these positions are held by members of protected groups (pregnant women included) (citing LeBlanc v. Great Am. Ins. Co., 6 F.3d 836, 844-45 (1st Cir.1993), cert. denied, 511 U.S. 1018, 114 S.Ct. 1398, 128 L.Ed.2d 72 (1994); Goldman v. First Nat'l Bank, 985 F.2d 1113, 1118-19 (1st Cir.1993); Montana v. First Fed. Sav. & Loan Ass'n, 869 F.2d 100, 105, 107 (2d Cir.1989); Dister v. Continental Group, Inc., 859 F.2d 1108-1115 (2d Cir.1988); Pearlstein v. Staten Island Univ. Hosp., 886 F.Supp. 260, 268-69 (E.D.N.Y.1995)).... [T]he flip side of the coin, however, is that an employer who selectively cleans house cannot hide behind convenient euphemisms such as downsizing or streamlining. Whether or not trimming the fat from a company's organizational chart is a prudent practice in a particular business environment, the employer's decision to eliminate specific positions must not be tainted by a discriminatory animus. 90 Id. at 422 (citing Goldman, 985 F.2d at 1118 n. 4; Maresco v. Evans Chemetics, 964 F.2d 106, 111 (2d Cir.1992); Mesnick, 950 F.2d at 825; Pearlstein, 886 F.Supp. at 268-69.). The court held that the employer may discharge an employee while she is on a pregnancy-induced leave so long as it does so for legitimate reasons unrelated to her gravidity. Id. at 424. Smith's employer had selected her merely because it realized that her position was not nearly as valuable as her supervisors previously believed. The fact that her absence on maternity leave afforded the employer an opportunity to learn just how expendable her position was did not mean that she was terminated because of her pregnancy. 91 However, and most significantly for purposes of our analysis, the court also stated: 92 Title VII mandates that an employer must put an employee's pregnancy (including her departure on maternity leave ) to one side in making its employment decisions--but the statute does not command that an employer bury its head in the sand and struthiously refrain from implementing business judgments simply because they affect a parturient employee. 93 Id. at 424 (citing Troupe, 20 F.3d at 738) (emphasis added). The court added that [a]t bottom, Title VII requires a causal nexus between the employer's state of mind and the protected trait (here, pregnancy). Id. at 425. In Smith, the nexus did not exist because the decision to eliminate the employee's job was based upon the importance (or lack thereof) of the job. Here, however, the decision to eliminate Rhett's job was based solely upon her pregnancy related absence. That causal nexis runs afoul of Title VII's prohibition of sex discrimination. 94 Carnegie clearly did not put Rhett's departure on maternity leave to one side when deciding to terminate her. Rhett's absence from work was so inextricably intertwined with pregnancy, her protected trait, as to make the two inseparable. In its theory of transitivity, the majority separates the events in this case into discrete entities that suggest the causal relationship between Rhett's pregnancy and her termination. The majority too easily rejects this position. See Maj. Op. at 296 (This view eliminates Rhett's theory of transitivity, that if A (termination) is caused by B (absence) which is caused by C (pregnancy), then C causes A.).