News[JURIST] The US Supreme Court [official website] on Wednesday ruled [opinion, PDF] 6-3 in Young v. United Parcel Service [SCOTUSblog backgrounder] that a plaintiff may satisfy the requirement to show a prima facie case of discrimination under the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA) [EEOC backgrounder] by showing that the employer accommodates a large percentage of nonpregnant workers while failing to accommodate a large percentage of pregnant workers. In 2006 petitioner Peggy Young requested light-duty work during her pregnancy to limit her package assignments to 20 pounds or less on the grounds that other United Parcel Service (UPS) [corporate website] employees were given light-duty work for other disabilities. UPS refused to accommodate Young [Guardian report], and she left the company in 2009. The lower courts granted summary judgment for UPS concluding that Young could not establish a prima facie case of discrimination, because those with whom Young had compared herself were too different to qualify as “similarly situated comparator[s].” The Supreme Court reversed and remanded to the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit [official website] to determine whether Young created a genuine issue of material fact as to whether UPS’s reasons for having treated Young differently than other disabled workers were pretextual.
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments ]JURIST report] in Young in December, where it considered arguments on whether the PDA requires an employer that provides work accommodations to non-pregnant employees with work limitations to provide work accommodations to pregnant employees who are similar in their ability or inability to work. The court granted certiorari [JURIST report] in July.
