In this country, women are left at a distinct professional disadvantage because they can become pregnant and give birth.
Of course, this disadvantage is entirely unwarranted. Those who choose to become mothers are not made less professionally valuable.
However, the theoretical possibility of paid maternity leave subjects all women to myriad forms of workplace discrimination, both implicit and explicit.
For Peggy Young, the discrimination was explicit. According to Fox News, in 2006 Young submitted a note from her doctor to her employer, United Parcel Service, recommending that she not lift any items weighing more than 20 pounds.
Rather than accommodate her doctor’s recommendation, UPS informed Young that she must go on unpaid leave until she was fit to work again because the ability to lift at least 70 pounds is a requirement of all employees. , according to the report.
After her daughter was born, Young took an additional two months to recover from the birth and procure adequate child care. She went unpaid and without benefits. When she finally left the company in 2009, Young sued UPS under the Pregnancy Discrimination Act.
Frankly, despite the fact that Young was clearly the victim of pregnancy discrimination, the outlook for a case contesting women’s rights is very bleak considering the Supreme Court recently handed down unfavorable opinions on insurance for contraception, abortion clinic buffer zones and wage discrimination.
The conservative court’s refusal to acknowledge unjust holes in federal law regarding women has set the nation back countless decades of progress. Young’s case is a chance for this narrow set of justices to redeem themselves and set a firm precedent of workplace equality for women, especially those who require particular circumstances due to pregnancy.
Some parties, including UPS’s lawyers, argue Young was not discriminated against based on her gender or pregnancy, according to Fox. However, the fact that other employees at received special accommodations similar to those requested by Young’s doctor due to their illnesses or injuries as Fox reported, completely negates that angle. The only outlier in Young’s case was that her condition was pregnancy.
In the words of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who criticized the Court earlier this year, “No one who wanted a dispensation didn’t get it. Except pregnant women.”
Of course, now that the case is in the Supreme Court’s hands, UPS has decided to level its policy playing field and begin offering tailored working conditions to pregnant employees in January 2015, but that development is almost surely yielded by public embarrassment rather than a shift in perspective of ideology.
The Supreme Court is expected to reach a decision in late June. In the meantime, women in the professional sphere will continue to await justice and equality as they have for many ?decades.
sbkissel@indiana.edu
