American Civil Liberties Union

More than 30 years after Congress passed the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, employers still engage in two kinds of pregnancy-related sex discrimination. First, they discriminate outright against workers who get pregnant — firing them or refusing to promote them when they need to take time off for pregnancy-related care and childbirth, and forcing them off the job by refusing to accommodate some women’s temporary restrictions on heavy lifting or other physical job duties. Second, employers discriminate against women workers more generally, by firing or refusing to hire or promote women based on stereotypical assumptions that women in a certain age bracket will — or should — get pregnant, have children, and cost the employer money by leaving the workplace or shifting to a less work-intensive “mommy track.”

Today the Supreme Court heard oral argument in the most significant case about the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA) and sex discrimination in employment since the landmark 2003 case Nevada Dep’t of Human Resources v. Hibbs. The case is Coleman v. Maryland Court of Appeals and, like Hibbs, it concerns the constitutionality of a provision of the FMLA, signed by President Clinton in his first act in office in 1993.