Court Opinion

ID: 9461940
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:28:25.46636+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:37:20.051213
License: Public Domain

SCHNACKE, District Judge
(concurring and dissenting).
I agree that defendants’ conduct does not violate the Equal Protection Clause. But I do not believe it violates Title VII either.
The Supreme Court, in Geduldig v. Aiello, 417 U.S. 484, 496-497, incl. fn. 20, 94 S.Ct. 2485, 2492, stated:
“The California insurance program does not exclude anyone from benefit *969eligibility because of gender but merely removes one physical condition— pregnancy — from the list of compensa-ble disabilities. . . . Normal pregnancy is an objectively identifiable physical condition with unique characteristics. . . . 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 . There is no risk from which men are protected and women are not. Likewise, there is no risk from which women are protected and men are not.”
The Court was clearly saying that any discrimination in California’s program was not because of sex and that any adverse effect the program’s classifications had on plaintiffs there was not in any way due to their sex. A program with such characteristics would not involve illegal sex bias under Title VII [see 42 U.S.C. § 2000e — 2(a)], and the school district’s sick leave plan is such a program. Plaintiff here has not suggested that the district’s “distinctions involving pregnancy are mere pretexts designed to effect an invidious discrimination against the members of one sex or the other” [see Geduldig v. Aiello, supra at fn. 20]. On the contrary, the district simply made a reasonable, good faith decision to cover only “illness or injury” in their program and, on good authority, determined that pregnancy is not an illness or injury. (The California program also covered only illnesses and injuries.)
Thus, there are compelling indications that the EEOC guidelines are wrong in treating the district’s pregnancy exclusion as a Title VII violation, so that courts need not defer to them on this point [Espinoza v. Farah Mfg. Co., 414 U.S. 86, 94-95, 94 S.Ct. 334, 38 L.Ed.2d 287 (1973)].
Since I do not think plaintiff here has any claim on which a federal court may grant her relief, I express no opinion as to whether the Eleventh Amendment bars non-injunctive relief against defendants school district and school board or whether defendant school board members are individually liable for damages.