Opinion ID: 381263
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Ambiguity of the Exchange Policy

Text: 31 Ms. Hanson alleged in her complaint, para. 8 that the 32 Personnel Policies, as will be more fully shown on trial, prevented the accumulation of adequate leave which could be used for the purposes of maternity leave, thereby denying all health insurance benefits to, and terminating the position of, any woman forced to take the maximum maternity leave provided for in said Personnel Policies. 33 App. 2. 34 She further submitted an affidavit in opposition to the defendant's motion to dismiss the complaint in which she alleged 35 8. That defendant's disbursing office informed her that defendant did not permit any type of leave without pay and at the time her accumulated annual or sick leave ran out she would be taken off the payroll. 36 9. That in addition, defendant's disbursing office informed her that at the time an employee is taken off the payroll all of her Blue Cross coverage would cease. 37 10. That from January 1976 up to approximately May 8, 1976 she attempted verbally to receive clarification from her supervisors concerning the status of her position and health insurance during the entire period of maternity leave provided for by the Personnel Policies. However, no clarification was received. 38 11. On May 8, 1976 when she was seven months pregnant, she wrote to Mrs. Josephine Collins, Chief Operator of the U.S. Capitol Telephone Exchange, requesting clarification of the policy pertaining to employee maternity leave. 39 12. That defendant responded to her request on May 21, 1976 by a letter in which he dismissed her, stating that the policy as enunciated is emphatically clear and that he know(s) of no way to restate the policy to make it more lucid. App. 40 (emphasis supplied). 3 40 Defendant maintains that the policy on its face provides not only for eight weeks' maternity leave as a matter of course, but for extensions by special request if validated by a doctor's certificate. 4 He admits that a pregnant woman would not be paid or continue to receive health insurance coverage during maternity leave once her accumulated sick and annual leave ran out, 5 but asserts in his brief that in practice the Senate Telephone Exchange has . . . routinely allowed employees who would otherwise go off the payroll during the course of a leave for maternity or other purposes to work out an extension of payroll coverage, by taking half-pay during the last few weeks of their active employment and receiving the other half when their annual-sick leave pay runs out. Brief for Appellee at 7-8 n. 5. To construe the policy to fire a woman when her annual-sick leave runs out, defendant contends, is a tortured reading. Brief for Appellee at 7 n. 4. The district court termed such a reading inaccurate. App. 45. 6 41 It is not at all clear to us that plaintiff's concerns (1) about retaining her job after her accumulated annual and sick leave expired; and (2) about receiving pay and insurance benefits during maternity leave, were unreasonable. It does not need a tortured reading of the policy to say that the taking of eight weeks' maternity leave would endanger a woman's job status if she had not accumulated that much annual and sick leave. Plaintiff was the first woman in her office to become pregnant following the issuance of the policy; the maternity leave policy had not previously been applied, and she apparently was not told the reassuring interpretations defendant now proffers. If we believe the allegations in her affidavit, she was told by the disbursing officer that when her leave ran out she would be taken off the payroll and that the Exchange did not permit any type of leave without pay. App. 40. For her persistence in her efforts to obtain clarification, plaintiff was fired. 42