Over thirty-five years after Congress passed the Pregnancy Discrimination Act to amend Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, the United States Supreme Court decided that Employers must provide a light duty position to a pregnant worker as a medical accommodation if restricted by her doctor, and similar light duty positions are afforded to other non-pregnant employees with similar limitations on their ability or inability to work.1 The Court explained that the Pregnancy Discrimination Act is clear that Title VII's prohibition against sex discrimination applies to discrimination "based on pregnancy." It also says that employers must treat "women affected by pregnancy ... the same for all employment-related purposes ... as other persons not so affected but similar in their ability or inability to work." 42 U.S.C. § 2000e(k). The Court decided the question of how this second provision applies in the context of an employer's policy that accommodates many, but not all, workers with nonpregnancy-related disabilities. Prior to the Young decision, courts frequently refused Title VII challenges to light duty policies that only applied to occupationally injured workers. A healthy pregnancy was not treated as a disability.
1 Young v. United Parcel Serv., Inc., 135 S. Ct. 1338, 1343-44, 191 L. Ed. 2d 279 (2015).
Young involved a part-time UPS driver whose doctor provided her with a twenty-pound lifting restriction in the first several months of her pregnancy, and a ten-pound lifting restriction thereafter. Young’s job required her to be able to lift up to seventy pounds. After her employer told her she could not work while under the lifting restriction, Young took a leave from work and eventually lost her medical coverage. She filed a Title VII and ADA lawsuit alleging that UPS discriminated against her due to sex and disability. Young pled a "disparate treatment" discrimination claim.
UPS had bargained a union contract that provided for temporary light duty positions in the following three circumstances: 1) occupational injury; 2) ADA qualifying disability; and 3) temporary loss of DOT certification. UPS argued that this light duty allocation was gender neutral and contractually binding.
The federal district court granted UPS’ motion for summary judgment and the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed. The appellate court reasoned that the employer’s light duty allocation policy was gender-blind. Because Young’s pregnancy was neither an occupational injury nor a disability, and it did not provide a legal obstacle such as a licensing issue to continue working, she was not comparable to the other workers who were provided temporary light duty positions. "Such a policy is at least facially a ‘neutral and legitimate business practice,’ and not evidence of UPS's discriminatory animus toward pregnant workers.2 The Fourth Circuit refused to treat temporary conditions caused by pregnancy more favorably for purposes of construing the PDA or providing claimed workplace benefits.
2 Young v. United Parcel Serv., Inc., 707 F.3d 437, 446 (4th Cir. 2013) cert. granted, 134 S. Ct. 2898, 189 L. Ed. 2d 853 (2014) and vacated and remanded, 135 S. Ct. 1338, 191 L. Ed. 2d 279 (2015) and opinion amended and superseded, 784 F.3d 192 (4th Cir. 2015).
3Because in 2008, Congress expanded the definition of "disability" under the ADA to make clear that "physical or mental impairment[s] that substantially limi[t]" an individual's ability to lift, stand, or bend are ADA-covered disabilities, the Court’s statutory interpretation at issue may have limited future import.
The U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari and reversed the Fourth Circuit. The Court reasoned that although an employer may defend against such a claim by showing it had non-discriminatory reasons for treating pregnancy-related infirmities and other work-limiting conditions differently, a plaintiff can overcome that showing with 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." Such evidence may defeat summary judgment and send the case for trial.3 In reviewing Young’s evidence and arguments, the Court applied the familiar McDonnell Douglas burden-shifting framework. In doing so, the Court focused on accommodations provided to other employees who were similar in their ability or inability to work.
In concluding its decision, the Court posed the following question: "why, when the employer accommodated so many, could it not accommodate pregnant women as well?" The Court did not decide that UPS had intentionally discriminated against Young, but instead left a final determination of that question for the Fourth Circuit to make on remand, in light of the Court’s interpretation of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act.
In light of the Supreme Court’s analysis in Young, employers should review their light duty or temporary alternative work policies. If a light duty policy provides disparate treatment to pregnant employees, it should be revised. If an employer has available light duty positions, it may be prudent to make them available for both work-injured and non-work-injured temporarily disabled employees. Accommodations provided to employees with injury-related lifting restrictions who are similarly situated in their ability or inability to work should correspondingly be provided to workers with pregnancy-related lifting restrictions who are similarly situated in
their ability or inability to work. Consulting with the employer’s attorney when these questions arise is recommended.