Today the U.S. Supreme Court released A.T. & T. v. Hulteen, which says that the company may calculate current pension payments using a length of service calculation that omitted pregnancy leaves taken prior to the 1979 Pregnancy Discrimination Act. In a 7-2 ruling the court overturned the Ninth Circuit. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg dissented, and was joined by Justice Stephen Breyer.
Ginsberg wrote: “ I would hold that AT&T committed a current violation of Title VII when, post-PDA,it did not totally discontinue reliance upon a pension calculation premised on the notion that pregnancy-based classifications display no gender bias. … Congress did not provide a remedy for pregnancy based discrimination already experienced before the PDA became effective. I am persuaded by the Act’s text and legislative history, however, that Congress intended no continuing reduction of women’s compensation, pension benefits included, attributable to their placement on pregnancy leave. ...
It is at least reasonable to read the PDA to say, from and after the effective date of the Act, no woman’s pension payments are to be diminished by the pretense that pregnancy-based discrimination displays no gender bias.
I would construe the Act to embrace plaintiffs’ complaint…”
The only good thing about this case is that only women who are receiving pensions now that include pre-1979 pregnancy leave can be subjected to ongoing gender-based discrimination. The bad news is that there must be a lot of women who were pregnant 30 or more years ago who are heading into retirement.
Perhaps the Lily Ledbetter act should be amended to cover this situation. Given how hard it was to pass that law, that may not be a likely outcome.
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