Supreme Court Rules OK for AT&T to Discriminate Against Pregnant Women

Monday, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of AT&T in the case of AT&T v. Hulteen, overturning a lower courts ruling which stated that decades-old maternity leaves should count in determining pensions. Four AT&T employees who took maternity leave prior to the 1979 Pregnancy Discrimination Act sued the company to get their time credited toward their pensions.

The Pregnancy Discrimination Act is an amendment to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Discrimination on the basis of pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions constitutes unlawful sex discrimination under Title VII, which covers employers with 15 or more employees, including state and local governments. Title VII also applies to employment agencies and to labor organizations, as well as to the federal government. Women who are pregnant or affected by related conditions must be treated in the same manner as other applicants or employees with similar abilities or limitations.

In other words, prior to the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, when you took maternity leave those days did not count towards your pension, though other types of leave, such as short term disability are not removed from your pension.  Therefore, when women who had had children prior to 1979 went to retire, they had smaller pensions than those who had worked at their jobs for the same amount of time and had even take leave.

Justices Ginsburg and Bryer dissented “By making it illegal to discriminate against women on pregnancy leave, “Congress intended no continuing reduction of women’s compensation, pension benefits included, attributable to their placement on pregnancy leave,” said Ginsburg, the court’s only woman.”

Considering that women already make less than men to start with, often end up taking some unpaid leave during their at least one pregnancy, if not more, and live longer than men, women are already at a disadvantage when it comes to our retirement years.

There were 12.6 million employed women aged 55 and over in the U.S. in 2008 according to the Labor Department.  I’m guessing that especially in this economy, alot of those women now cannot afford to retire.  We need Congress to step up and fix this like they had to fix the mess the Supreme Court made out of the Ledbetter decision, otherwise women – who we all know are especially integral to society during a recession – are going to be incredibly harmed.

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Supreme Court Rules OK for AT&T to Discriminate Against Pregnant Women