Pregnancy Discrimination

09/18/2012

Fired for My Family

By Emily Herx, a teacher at a Catholic school in Indiana who was fired after the school discovered that she used IVF to try to become pregnant. The teacher filed EEOC charges and later a lawsuit in federal court alleging discrimination on the basis of sex and disability. The ACLU has filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the case.

I did not imagine when I began teaching at St. Vincent de Paul School that I would find myself in this position today. I loved teaching, and was devoted to my profession and to my students. When I was fired, I was shocked and saddened.

09/17/2012

Pregnancy Discrimination

Religion Isn’t a Free Pass to Discriminate Against Employees

By Christina Brandt-Young, Attorney, ACLU Women's Rights Project & Jenny Lee, Staff Attorney, American Civil Liberties Union at 5:49pm

Across the country teachers at religiously affiliated schools are being fired for their reproductive choices. What’s worse, the schools are unapologetic, claiming they have the right to discriminate because of their religious beliefs.

Emily Herx, a former Language Arts and Literature teacher at St. Vincent de Paul, a Catholic School in Indiana, was fired after she requested time off to receive in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment. She is suing the school for sex and disability discrimination in federal court, and today we filed a friend-of-the court brief to support her legal arguments. A few states over, Jane Doe (a pseudonym), an employee at a Catholic school in Missouri, was fired for becoming pregnant outside of wedlock. Today the ACLU of Kansas & Western Missouri filed a complaint on Jane’s behalf with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for sex discrimination.

08/06/2012

Pregnant and Parenting Teens

Get Tested Or Get Out: School Forces Pregnancy Tests on Girls, Kicks out Students Who Refuse or are Pregnant

By Tiseme Zegeye, ACLU Women's Rights Project at 12:33pm

In a Louisiana public school, female students who are suspected of being pregnant are told that they must take a pregnancy test. Under school policy...

06/21/2012

Title IX

Quilting is not Geometry: Pregnant and Parenting Teens Deserve an Education Free from Discrimination

By Tiseme Zegeye, ACLU Women's Rights Project at 2:21pm

This Saturday marks the 40^th anniversary of the passage of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, the landmark law that prohibits sex discrimination in federally funded education programs and activities. Among its other, better-known applications (for example, mandating equality in athletics), Title IX bans discrimination against pregnant and parenting students. Title IX’s regulations mandate that schools cannot apply school policies differently on the basis of sex based on marital or parental status, nor can a school discriminate against or exclude any person “on the basis of pregnancy, childbirth, termination of pregnancy, or recovery therefrom.”

05/13/2012

Pregnancy Discrimination

Respecting Moms on Mother's Day

By Tiseme Zegeye, ACLU Women's Rights Project at 10:27am

This Mother's Day, we need to work towards a country where women's work is truly respected and valued both inside and outside of the home.

03/30/2012

This Week in Civil Liberties

This Week in Civil Liberties (3/30/2012)

By Rekha Arulanantham, ACLU at 7:01pm

In which state did doctors try to force a pregnant woman to have a c-section against her wishes?

What group can no longer be held in solitary confinement in Mississippi?

How many cells compose a person according to Personhood USA's definition?

How many states oppose a national ID card?

Which federal agency illegally gathers intelligence on innocent American Muslims?

Your Body, Your Decisions — This Means You, Moms!
Recently, a mother in South Carolina reached out to the ACLU for help. She was pregnant, and although she had had two prior cesarean surgeries, she wished to attempt a "trial of labor," that is, to give birth naturally, rather than having a scheduled cesarean surgery. The mother's wish made sense in light of her medical history, and according to professional standards set by obstetricians.

03/26/2012

Pregnancy Discrimination

Your Body, Your Decisions – This Means You, Moms!

By Mie Lewis, Women's Rights Project at 1:57pm

Recently, a mother in South Carolina reached out to the ACLU for help. She was pregnant, and although she had had two prior cesarean surgeries, she wished to attempt a “trial of labor,” that is, to give birth naturally, rather than having a scheduled cesarean surgery. The mother’s wish made sense in light of her medical history, and according to professional standards set by obstetricians.

03/23/2012

This Week in Civil Liberties

This Week in Civil Liberties (3/23/2012)

By Rekha Arulanantham, ACLU at 5:39pm

Some employers are asking job applicants for their passwords to which social networking site?

Which court ruled that a law that protects pregnant workers is unenforceable?

Which country is the only one in the world that sentences children to life without parole?

What government agency continues to defend warrantless wiretapping?

How could a shooter claim self-defense after killing an unarmed teenager in Florida?

03/22/2012

Title IX

You Have a Right to an Education: Breaking Down the Barriers Facing Pregnant and Parenting Teens in School

Teenage moms and moms-to-be are treated with shocking hostility when they are just trying get an education.

03/22/2012

Women's Rights in the Workplace

The (Not-So-Secret) War on Moms : How the Supreme Court Took Protections Away from Pregnant Workers

By Ariela Migdal, ACLU Women's Rights Project at 11:03am

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.

American Civil Liberties Union