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by Causes | 10.30.19

On October 31, 1978, President Jimmy Carter signed the Pregnancy Discrimination Act into law to extend civil rights protections from sex discrimination to pregnant women in the workforce.

Why did it come up?

The bill was introduced in direct response to a pair of Supreme Court rulings that illustrated the need for Congress to enact specific protections against pregnancy discrimination:

In Geduldig v. Aiello (1974), the Court ruled in a 6-3 decision that the State of California’s decision to deny Disability Fund benefits to a pregnant woman whose disability stemmed from pregnancy complications didn’t violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
In General Electric Company v. Gilbert (1976), the Court again ruled in a 6-3 decision that employers have a right to exclude any condition from a disability plan with a reasonable basis after a class action lawsuit was filed claiming a violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

What did it do?

The Pregnancy Discrimination Act added pregnancy, childbirth, and related medical conditions to the sex discrimination prohibition within the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in employment and in fringe benefit plans. It required that where benefit costs were equally divided between employers and employees additional costs imposed by this legislation be shared in the same way.

It exempted employers from paying for health insurance benefits related to abortions, except where the life of the mother would be endangered by carrying the fetus to term or where medical complications have arisen from an abortion.

The Pregnancy Discrimination Act also prohibited employers from reducing existing benefits in order to comply with this legislation for a one year period after its enactment, or prior to the expiration of a collective bargaining agreement.

In a signing statement, President Carter wrote that the bill “stands for the principle of equal justice under the law” and added that it wasn’t conferring special privileges on pregnant women:

“It does not bestow favored treatment on America’s 42 million working women. Nor does it diminish in any way the rights and benefits of their male coworkers. It simply requires employers who have medical disability plans to provide for disability due to pregnancy and related conditions on an equal basis with other medical conditions.”

What has its impact been?

The Pregnancy Discrimination Act has provided pregnant women facing discrimination in the workplace an avenue for legal recourse, and has prompted high profile challenges that made it to the nation’s highest court.

The most notable of these is Young v. United Parcel Service (2015), in which the Supreme Court delivered a 6-3 opinion led by Justice Stephen Breyer that provided a balancing test for determining whether employers discriminated against pregnant women:

“A worker making a claim that her company intentionally treated her differently due to her pregnancy must show that she sought an accommodation, her company refused and then granted accommodations to others suffering from similar restrictions. The company, in turn, can try to show that its reasons were legitimate ― but not because it is more expensive or less convenient to add pregnant women to the categories of workers who are accommodated.”

— Eric Revell

(Photo Credit: U.S. National Archives and Records / Public Domain)

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