In Young, a pregnant employee requested that her employer accommodate her pregnancy by not requiring her to lift more than 20 pounds. Relying on the employee’s job description, which required her to be able to lift up to 70 pounds, the employer declined to provide the employee with the requested accommodation.
The employer did, however, have policies that allowed other employees to continue to work with lifting restrictions below 70 pounds. The employer provided such accommodations for employees who were injured on the job, employees who had lost their Department of Transportation certifications, and employees who suffered from a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
The employer argued that these employees were not “similarly situated,” because the pregnant employee had not been injured on the job, had not lost a legally required license, and did not have a “disability” under the Americans with Disabilities Act. The Supreme Court, however, rejected those arguments, stating that all such employees were “similarly situated in their ability or inability to work.” In other words, because the pregnant employee and the employees injured on the job, for example, were all similarly limited in their inability to lift certain weights, those were appropriate comparators. In effect, this finding allowed the pregnant employee to establish a prima facie case of disparate treatment discrimination by proving that she requested an accommodation (temporary lifting restrictions) that the employer provided to other employees (such as those injured on the job), but that the employer had refused to provide her.
The Court, nevertheless, protected an employer’s ability to establish that it declined the requested accommodation based on legitimate, non-discriminatory means. In doing so, the Court appeared to set a heightened standard in the context of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act by requiring employers to assert a “sufficiently strong” reason for not accommodating pregnant workers. Thus, if the employer could prove that it declined to provide the requested lifting restrictions for a legitimate business reason, not simply that it would be more expensive or less convenient to do so, only then would the employee have to demonstrate that the employer’s legitimate, non-discriminatory reason was a mere pretext for discrimination, the framework under which courts analyze all other disparate treatment discrimination claims.
Practically, this means that employers must be prepared to accommodate pregnant employees who request accommodations similar to the accommodations that employers provide other employees who have work restrictions. For example, if an employer provides “light duty work” to some employees, it must also provide “light duty work” to pregnant employees who have similar limitations on the activities in which they can engage.
Employers may also need to consider the effect of any policies or practices regarding “light duty work” on the employer’s obligation to provide similar benefits to pregnant employees. For example, employers who place employees on “light duty work” under a wide variety of circumstances and for long periods of time are more likely to be required to provide pregnant employees with “light duty work” for similarly extensive periods of time.
This decision, in effect, requires employers to focus on an employee’s specific requested accommodation and the physician work restrictions of all employees at issue, rather than the reason why the employee is requesting the accommodation. When faced with a request for accommodation on the basis of pregnancy, employers should thoroughly consider whether they have provided the requested accommodation to any other employees who are similarly situated “in their ability or inability to work.”