Court: Pregnancy discrimination can still occur four months after childbirth

Last night, having come across this wacky Family Show gif, I couldn’t decide whether to binge watch the first season of Amish Mafia. Again. For the third time.

(And, by third, I mean eighth).

Or dip my English toe into the Breaking Amish pool.

So, in an attempt to get in the mood, I tried to bake a shoofly pie, but, short on blackstap molasses and a replacement plug for my Easy Bake Oven, I quickly audibled to a Fluffernutter.

Because nothing speaks to me to resolve a Wednesday night Amish television dilemma like a Fluffernutter, amirite?

But, two — ok, two-and-a-half — Fluffernutters later, I had a hankering to blog about the Supreme Court’s employment-law docket for next session, which includes a pregnancy discrimination case, involving the manner in which an employer would have to accommodate a pregnant employee.

You can read more about that one here and here.

But, then, my peanut-buttery-marshmallow focus honed in on this recent decision from United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. It involves an employee who returned from maternity leave and, shortly thereafter, applied for a job promotion, only to be bypassed for another candidate. So, she quit and sued for pregnancy discrimination.

Now, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act prohibits discrimination based on pregnancy. It also protects those who have recently given birth…up to a point. That is, a new mom is protected too. But, the passage of time will eventually carry a new mom outside of the protection of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act.

How long you ask? Well, according to the court deciding the employer’s motion to dismiss, about four months, which, ironically, is the time it would take me to master the art of baking shoofly pie.

In denying the motion to dismiss and allowing the bypassed plaintiff to continue to pursue her pregnancy discrimination claim, the court measured the time period from the date of childbirth to the date the plaintiff first applied for the promotion, which was under four months. (Rather than when the employer hired someone else to fill the position, which was beyond four months).

So, employers, learn from the mistake made here and do it right: wait four months and a day before taking adverse employment actions against new moms, don’t allow pregnancy (or recent childbirth) to factor, at all, into your employment decisions. Make sure that your managers, the ones making the decisions, understand that as well. And don’t forget about sex-plus discrimination either.

Hey, how’d that last song get in there? Someone call my music editor!

Image credit: Giphy