Supreme Court Creates New Legal Standard For Pregnancy Discrimination Claims

This morning, a divided Supreme Court reversed the employer’s summary judgment in a disparate treatment pregnancy discrimination case, but rejected the legal and statutory interpretation arguments submitted by the government, EEOC, employer and plaintiff.  Instead, the Court created a new standard which applies only to pregnancy discrimination claims.  Young v. UPS, No. 12-1226 (3-25-15).  The issue confronting the Court was how an employer must treat a pregnant employee who requires an accommodation offered to some, but not all, other non-pregnant employees with similar physical restrictions.  The Court rejected most-favored-nations status for pregnant employees based simply on the grounds that accommodations have been offered to only some employees. It also rejected the employer’s argument that pregnant employees only need to be treated the same as other non-pregnant employees.  Instead, the Court slightly relaxed the similarly-situated standard in the prima facie case, rejected certain business justifications, and expanded what could constitute pretext for discrimination. 

According to the Court’s opinion, the employer requires delivery drivers to carry up to 70 pounds.  During her pregnancy, the plaintiff was medically restricted to carrying only 20 pounds.  The employer refused to waive the lifting requirement, to temporarily transfer her to an alternative position or to permit her to work.  She took unpaid leave and ultimately lost her medical coverage.  This lawsuit followed. 

The employer defended its refusal to waive its lifting requirements or to transfer her to a light duty position on the basis that it only accommodated employees with workers’ compensation injuries, who lost their DOT certifications, or who were covered by the ADA (which, should be noted, does not include pregnancy as a disability or require an employer to eliminate an essential job function, but could require a transfer to another, open position).  The plaintiff contended (over the employer’s objection) that it also accommodated other employees with physical limitations.  A union steward testified that the only physical limitations that the employer did not accommodate with a transfer were pregnant employees.   The employer was given summary judgment (on the basis that the plaintiff did not identify similarly situated employees who were treated better), which was affirmed on appeal.  Those courts would only permit the pregnant plaintiff to compare herself to employees injured off the job.

The Court noted that the Pregnancy Discrimination Act has two provisions at issue in the litigation:  the incorporation of pregnancy into the definition of Title VII’s sex discrimination and a duty to treat pregnancy physical limitations “the same . . . .as other persons not so affected but similar in their ability or in­ability to work.” 

The Court rejected the employer’s argument that the second clause in the PDA merely clarifies the meaning of sex discrimination because the clarification would render the first clause superfluous.  Therefore, the Court rejected the employer’s proposed analysis that “courts would compare the accommodations an employer provides to pregnant women with the accommodations it provides to others within a facially neutral category (such as those with off-the-job injuries) to determine whether the em­ployer has violated Title VII.”  That analysis would exist even in the absence of the second clause: “If the second clause of the Act did not exist, we would still say that an employer who disfa­vored pregnant women relative to other workers of similar ability or inability to work had engaged in pregnancy discrimination.”

The  Court also rejected the plaintiff’s argument that an employer must accommodate every pregnant employee’s restrictions if it accommodates any other employee’s restrictions.  The Court found that this granted pregnant employees  “most favored nation” status which would discourage an employer from accommodating the physical restrictions of long-time employees, those employees with special, extraordinarily hazardous and/or necessary skills or elderly employees.  Indeed, seniority is a enumerated defense to a Title VII claim.

The language of the statute does not require that unqualified reading. The second clause, when referring to nonpregnant persons with simi­lar disabilities, uses the open-ended term “other persons.” It does not say that the employer must treat pregnant employees the “same” as “any other persons” (who are similar in their ability or inability to work), nor does it otherwise specify which other persons Congress had in mind.

Moreover, disparate-treatment law normally permits an employer to implement policies that are not intended to harm members of a protected class, even if their imple­mentation sometimes harms those members, as long as the employer has a legitimate, nondiscriminatory, nonpre­textual reason for doing so.

The Court refused to give any significant weight to last year’s EEOC PDA guidance which advised employers to provide the same accommodations to pregnant employees that it provides to employees with work injuries. Both before and immediately after the passage of the PDA, the EEOC guidelines required only that pregnancy be treated the same as other medical conditions:

“Disabilities caused or contributed to by preg­nancy . . . for all job-related purposes, shall be treated the same as disabilities caused or contributed to by other medical conditions.”

  In rejecting the recent EEOC guidance, the Court cited concerns with its

timing, “consistency,” and “thor­oughness” of “consideration.” The EEOC promulgated its 2014 guidelines only recently, after this Court had granted certiorari in this case. In these circumstances, it is fair to say that the EEOC’s current guidelines take a position about which the EEOC’s previous guidelines were silent. And that position is inconsistent with positions for which the Government has long advocated. . . . Nor does the EEOC explain the basis of its latest guidance. Does it read the statute, for example, as embodying a most-favored-nation status?   Why has it now taken a position contrary to the litigation position the Government previously took?   Without further explanation, we cannot rely significantly on the EEOC’s determination.

The Court observed that the PDA was enacted to overrule the Court’s prior decision in General Elec. Co. v. Gil­bert, 429 U. S. 125 where the employer provided sickness and accident insurance to non-pregnant employees and the Court found no sex discrimination because women received the same coverage that men did.  Simply including pregnancy into Title VII would not have changed the result in Gilbert, which was the intent of the second clause in the PDA.

While pregnancy discrimination claims are to be treated similarly to any other sex discrimination claims, they will differ in three material respects.  For instance, the similarly-situated standard must be relaxed:

an individual plaintiff may establish a prima facie case by ‘showing actions taken by the employer from which one can infer, if such actions remain unexplained, that it is more likely than not that such actions were based on a discriminatory criterion illegal under’ Title VII. . . . Nei­ther does it require the plaintiff to show that those whom the employer favored and those whom the employer disfa­vored were similar in all but the protected ways.

In particular, the Court laid out the shifting burdens of proof as follows:

First, the plaintiff must show:

a) that she belongs to the protected class,

b) that she sought accommodation,

c) that the employer did not accommodate her, and that the employer did accommodate others “simi­lar in their ability or inability to work.”

Second, the employer would need to provide a legitimate and nondiscriminatory reason for refusing to provide the requested accommodation.

 

But, consistent with the Act’s basic objective, that reason normally cannot consist simply of a claim that it is more expensive or less convenient to add pregnant women to the category of those (“similar in their ability or inability to work”) whom the employer accom­modates. After all, the employer in Gilbert could in all likelihood have made just such a claim.

Third, the plaintiff must show that the employer’s reason is pretextual.

We believe that the plaintiff may reach a jury on this issue by providing sufficient evidence that the employer’s policies impose a significant burden on preg­nant workers, and that the employer’s “legitimate, nondis­criminatory” reasons are not sufficiently strong to justify the burden, but rather—when considered along with the burden imposed—give rise to an inference of intentional discrimination.

The plaintiff can create a genuine issue of material fact as to whether a significant burden exists by providing evidence that the employer accommodates a large per­centage of nonpregnant workers while failing to accommo­date a large percentage of pregnant workers. Here, for example, if the facts are as Young says they are, she can show that UPS accommodates most nonpregnant employ­ees with lifting limitations while categorically failing to accommodate pregnant employees with lifting limitations. Young might also add that the fact that UPS has multiple policies that accommodate nonpregnant employees with lifting restrictions suggests that its reasons for failing to accommodate pregnant employees with lifting restrictions are not sufficiently strong—to the point that a jury could find that its reasons for failing to accommodate preg­nant employees give rise to an inference of intentional discrimination.

In response to the dissent’s concern that the  Court was imposing liability under a disparate impact theory, it notes that it intends for “continued focus on whether the plaintiff has introduced sufficient evidence to give rise to an inference of intentional discrimination.”

Ultimately, the Court reversed the employer’s summary judgment, but left open the possibility that the employer’s explanation could ultimately prevail on summary judgment because it was expressing no opinion as to whether the plaintiff had introduced sufficient evidence to show pretext.

NOTICE: This summary is designed merely to inform and alert you of recent legal developments. It does not constitute legal advice and does not apply to any particular situation because different facts could lead to different results. Information here can be changed or amended without notice. Readers should not act upon this information without legal advice. If you have any questions about anything you have read, you should consult with or retain an employment attorney.