AAUW Dialog

Yesterday I attended oral arguments at the U.S. Supreme Court for AT&T Corp v. Hulteen, a case that involves the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA). Congress passed the PDA in 1978 as an amendment to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to ensure that women and men can take time off from work for pregnancy-related problems without fearing adverse employment action.

The Hulteen case involves a group of women who took pregnancy leave before the PDA passed, and now their pensions are smaller than those of women who took pregnancy leave at AT&T after 1978. The women argue that their pensions should reflect the new pregnancy leave policy, not the older, discriminatory policy. The 9th Circuit Court ruled in favor of the employees, and AT&T appealed. This year, AAUW joined the Women’s Law Center on their amicus brief in support of the respondents.

During the oral argument yesterday, the justices asked how this case fits within the precedent set recently in Ledbetter v. Goodyear. There, the court denied Lilly Ledbetter’s disparate pay claim, stating that she should have filed suit when the unequal pay decisions were initially made, instead of after the 180-day statutory limit; Justice Ruth Ginsburg filed a dissenting opinion arguing that each time Ledbetter was paid less than her male counterparts were, a new, actionable pay decision was made.

In Hulteen, attorneys for the employees argued that the women had only recently felt the effects of AT&T’s failure to provide them with pregnancy credit toward their pension benefits. Therefore, unlike in the Ledbetter case, where the employee was affected every time she received a paycheck, the women in Hulteen had to wait until their total amount of employment was calculated (without the time taken for pregnancy leave) to have a cause of action.

While the attorneys made various legal arguments, I believe that the court’s interpretation of Ledbetter is going to be crucial to its ultimate decision. Two terms ago, when the court first decided Ledbetter, we did not know what implications it would have; this case allows the court to consider the significance of Ledbetter in a situation where the outcome of the discrimination would not be directly felt for decades. It will certainly be interesting to see how narrowly or broadly the court interprets Ledbetter in light of the facts in this case.

This post was written by AAUW Legal Advocacy Fund fellow Rebecca Herr.