Editorial Calls Supreme Court's Pregnancy Leave Decision 'Not Just'

Main Category: Pregnancy / Obstetrics
Also Included In: Litigation / Medical Malpractice;  Women's Health / Gynecology
Article Date: 22 May 2009 - 5:00 PDT

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"The Supreme Court keeps finding ways to deny women equal pay and benefits," a New York Times editorial states in response to the court's 7-2 ruling on Monday that employers are not required to award women credit toward pension benefits for pregnancy leave taken before Congress passed the 1978 Pregnancy Discrimination Act. According to the Times, the ruling reflects reasoning similar to the court's 2007 decision in which it denied former Goodyear employee Lilly Ledbetter's "claim for equal pay because it thought she waited too long to file it." In Monday's decision, the majority "reasoned mainly that the pregnancy leaves predated the 1978 law, and since the law was not retroactive, the discrepancy in benefits was the product of 'past completed events that were entirely lawful at the time they occurred,'" the editorial states. It notes that the majority included "two generally reliable votes for equality, Justices John Paul Stevens and David Souter."

The editorial continues, "This may sound logical, but it is not just." The editorial says that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in writing the dissent, "quite correctly" recognized a company's "ongoing denial of equal benefits not as past discriminatory behavior that started and ended decades ago, but as a current violation of the act." In a similar way, "Goodyear discriminated against Lilly Ledbetter by maintaining her unequal pay for years, not merely the first time the company underpaid her." The Times calls on Congress to "write corrective legislation" on pregnancy leave (New York Times, 5/21).

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