The Supreme Court ruled 7-2 Monday that womenwho want their maternity leaves calculated fully into retirementbenefits cannot sue for leaves taken before a 1978 federal law made itillegal to discriminate on the basis of pregnancy.
Reversing a lower appeals court decision againstAT&T Corp., the justices said the 1978 Pregnancy Discrimination Actdoes not prevent a company from giving less retirement credit forpregnancy leaves taken earlier in the 1970s than for leaves based onother medical conditions. Justice David Souter,writing for the majority, said Congress did not intend the PDA to applyretroactively to retirement benefits under otherwise legitimateseniority systems. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, joined only byJustice Stephen Breyer , said in a dissenting statement that the decision effectively allows continued discrimination based on pregnancy. The former AT&T workers, Ginsburg wrote,”will receive, for the rest of their lives, lower pension benefits thancolleagues who worked for AT&T no longer than they did. They willexperience this discrimination not simply because of the adverse actionto which they were subjected pre-PDA. Rather they are harmed todaybecause AT&T has refused fully to heed the PDA’s core command,”that discrimination based on pregnancy must cease. Ginsburg, the only woman on the nine-membercourt, noted that “attitudes about pregnancy and childbirth …havesustained pervasive, often law-sanctioned, restrictions on a woman’splace among paid workers and active citizens. Noreen Hulteen and three other women who workedfor AT&T started the case, alleging that the company violatedanti-bias law by according their pregnancy leaves less retirementcredit than medical leave generally. They were seeking greater pensionbenefits. Lower federal courts ruled for the women in finding thatemployers could not incorporate pre-PDA accrual differentials intotheir retirement calculations.
USA Today article: http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/retirement/2009-05-18-maternityleave_N.htm
Decision: http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/08pdf/07-543.pdf
Ed: Those creeps.