American Civil Liberties Union

When Peggy Young got pushed out of her job at UPS after she became pregnant, she fought back by bringing a lawsuit against her employer, claiming that UPS discriminated against her by refusing to give her a light duty rotation, even though UPS admitted that it routinely accommodates workers with on-the-job injuries, workers who lose their drivers’ licenses, and workers who are covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act.  Unfortunately, many employers think it’s okay to treat pregnant workers worse than other employees who need temporary light duty positions or other temporary adjustments, like the ability to sit down or drink more water.  And some courts have agreed. 

Less than three months after the Pentagon announced that it was loosening the rules that bar women from being assigned to ground combat units, the Marine Corps followed suit, taking important steps to open up previously restricted opportunities to women. Last week, the Marines announced that women volunteers would be allowed to attend the Infantry Officers Course in Quantico, Va., for the first time, and that enlisted Marine women would also soon gain access to infantry training. This week, Marine Corps General James F. Amos sent a message to all Marines explaining that the Corps would begin assigning women to a number of positions from which they had previously been restricted, including in artillery, tank, assault amphibian, and other staffs, for purposes of "research" on integrating women into the force. He also announced that the Marines will conduct quantitative research on how men and women Marines perform in tests such as marching with a heavy load and lifting a heavy machine gun.

Like many women, police officer Annie Balcastro of Wallingford, CT faced an uncertain future when she had to request a light-duty accommodation during her pregnancy. Many pregnant workers whose jobs entail physical activity are pushed out of the workforce when pregnant, even though their employers have provisions in place for other workers who are temporarily unable to do all aspects of their jobs, such as injured workers. Currently, fewer than ten states require employers to provide reasonable accommodations to pregnant employees who want to remain on the job but are unable to perform some aspect of their job during pregnancy.

This week, the Supreme Court ruled, by the all-too-familiar 5-4 margin, that a provision of the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) giving workers time off to care for their own serious health conditions — including pregnancy and childbirth — can't be enforced by state employees in damages lawsuits against their public employers. The decision in Coleman v. Court of Appeals of Maryland effectively stripped many public employees — the majority of whom are women — of the right to job protection when they need to take time off while pregnant. The ACLU had joined an amicus brief arguing that the law was written in a gender-neutral way to provide women workers with the time they needed to go through childbirth and pregnancy-related complications, while ensuring that employers wouldn't discriminate based on the assumption that only women will need to take health-related leave from their jobs. While no opinion garnered five votes, a majority of the Court agreed that the law was not justified as a remedy for a pattern of unconstitutional discrimination against women or pregnant workers.