A federal appeals court panel has actually come out along with a decision interpreting the U.S. Best Court’s decision last year in Young v. UPS, and the result wasn’t as well great for the employer.
The Sheriff’s Department of Ulster County, Brand-new York, offered light duty for employees along with work-related injuries however didn’t give it for any person else. Plaintiff Ann Marie Legg, a corrections officer at the County Jail, requested light duty for her pregnancy — in 2008 — and was denied it because her pregnancy was obviously not a work-related condition. Merely concerning any sort of employer in 2008 would certainly probably have actually done the same.
Ms. Legg was forced to go out on maternity leave, however after she had the baby, she returned to job . . . and filed a discrimination charge, followed by a lawsuit. A federal judge in Brand-new York dismissed the pregnancy discrimination claim on the ground that the County had a neutral policy of not providing light duty except for on-the-task injuries. Ms. Legg had others claims that went to trial. At trial, she won one claim and lost the rest.
Unfortunately for the County, last judgment in the case wasn’t entered until August 2014, and the two sides appealed. You can easily probably guess the remainder — the appeals were still pending in March 2015, once the Best Court issued its decision in Young v. UPS, which arguably meant that the district court’s dismissal of the pregnancy discrimination claim wasn’t valid any sort of more.
The three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit didn’t locate that Ulster County was necessarily in the wrong, however it did say that the Young decision needed her pregnancy discrimination claim to be decided by a jury.
EX Information FACTO?
Ms. Legg’s baby would certainly have actually been in second grade (or thereabouts) by the time that the Best Court decided Young. It doesn’t appear reasonable to hold an employer legally responsible in 2016 for a decision gained in 2008 that was legal and great HR method at the time. however that’s the means our system works. A statute is generally not retroactive, however a court decision usually does apply retroactively to any sort of cases that are still “alive” (either pending, or yet to be filed) once the decision is rendered.
Ms. Legg’s baby today. (Merely kidding.)
Nonetheless, the long lapse of time coupled along with a substantial adjustment in the law bothers me, and so did an additional section of the decision. The panel said that the County’s reasons for failing to accommodate pregnancy were “inconsistent.” The County cited in its defense a state law that needed municipalities to pay workers that were injured on the job. The Sheriff (that was additionally a defendant) had testified that he limited light duty to work-related injuries since he didn’t want everyone else taking advantage. an additional employee testified that light duty wasn’t offered to pregnant employees as a result of a desire to protect the mother and her unborn child. (Remember, the work environment was a jail. Ms. Legg asked for light duty after she was bumped by an inmate that joined a fight along with another inmate.) The Sheriff additionally “conceded” on cross-examination that it was much less expensive for the County not to accommodate pregnancy. (Not any sort of more, it ain’t, Sheriff.)
I don’t see this as “inconsistent” evidence — every one of these statements could be true, and the County could have actually still been attempting to comply along with the statute devoid of opening the barn door to every single request for light duty from every single employee.
In others words, it didn’t appear to me that the County’s reasons were pretextual (legalese for “phony” or “bogus”).
LESSONS FOR EMPLOYERS POST-YOUNG
But the Legg decision contains some great lessons for employers that are faced along with pregnancy accommodation requests in the modern era:
*DO accommodate pregnancy-related restrictions if you can. Even though you aren’t legally needed by federal law to do it, the federal legal standard is maddeningly mushy. If you don’t want to be at the mercy of a jury, after that accommodate.
*DO be aware of and comply along with the laws in your state, which might clearly and affirmatively require you to accommodate pregnancy. (If I’m not mistaken, Brand-new York City has actually a pregnancy accommodation law, however Brand-new York State does not.)
If you’re going to usage statistics in your defense, they’d much better be sound.
There was an interesting argument that the County gained and the Second Circuit (correctly, I think) slapped down. It related to the section of the Young standard that says an employer’s legitimate explanation for its refusal to accommodate pregnancy may be bogus if the refusal “significantly burdens” pregnant employees. The County said that the just pregnant employee while this particular Sheriff joined office was Ms. Legg (from 176 employees total), and declining to accommodate one pregnant woman from 176 employees could not “significantly burden” pregnant employees.
Nunh-unh, the Court said. Rather, 100 percent (1 from 1) of the County’s pregnant employees had been “burdened” by the accommodations policy, which was arguably rather “significant.” On the others hand, the Court said, an employer along with 50 pregnant employees that declined to accommodate just five may not be “significantly burdening” pregnant employees.
I chance the County has actually an excellent lawyer!
“Under Young,” the Court said, “the focus is on exactly how several pregnant employees were denied accommodations in relation to the total variety of pregnant employees, not exactly how several were denied accommodations in relation to all of employees, pregnant or not.” That makes sense to me — the Court wasn’t saying the County was certainly guilty since its fee was “100 percent” based on the smallest of samplings — however just that the reasonable number could not be a defense in itself. The County will certainly still have actually the possibility to persuade a jury that it did not discriminate versus Ms. Legg based on her pregnancy.
Finally, the decision did not treat whether the County offered light duty as a reasonable accommodation to employees along with non-work-related disabilities. I assume it did not, although it probably need to have. however if the County had accommodated disabled employees, I’m afraid that would certainly have actually been Merely another need for the Court to locate that it could have actually easily accommodated Ms. Legg’s pregnancy, as well.
Image Credits: Pregnant woman from Wikimedia Commons. Others from flickr, Creative Commons license: Old man in shorts by Brian Leadingham; 6 from 7 dwarves by Andrew Torvin; “JURY” poster by thinboyfatter.