Abstract

This Article will explore how pregnant employees fare when they are denied accommodations in the workplace that would have allowed them to work safely through their pregnancies. The two most commonly used legal avenues for pregnant plaintiffs are the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA) and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Successful cases under the ADA were rare until Congress expanded the ADA’s definition of disability in 2008. PDA claims became easier after the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision in Young v. United Parcel Service, Inc. This Article will analyze both the body of PDA cases decided since Young, and all of the ADA cases where pregnancy is the claimed disability since the ADA was amended in 2008. Although the picture isn’t quite rosy for pregnant plaintiffs, it is perhaps more positive than many scholars predicted it would be. Nevertheless, there remain many gaps in protection— some caused by the statutes’ limitations—but many caused by litigants’ and judges’ inability (or unwillingness) to properly interpret these two statutes. This Article will explain where we are and explore options for where we should go in the future.

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2020

Publication Information

14 Saint Louis Journal of Health Law & Policy 73-114 (2020)

Comments

Written for the symposium Health Inequities and Employment: The New Civil Rights Struggle for Justice (2020) sponsored by Saint Louis University School of Law.

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