The prohibition against sex discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act includes discrimination based on pregnancy, and requires employers to treat women “affected by pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions” the same as they treat other employees not so affected. Under the courts’ expansive reading of this language, pregnancy-related medical conditions can include breastfeeding. Title VII is silent, however, on whether it requires an employer to accommodate an employee protected by this language.
In the landmark 2015 case of Young v. UPS, the U.S. Supreme Court addressed the pregnancy accommodation issue by crafting a modified burden of proof test applicable only to Title VII failure-to-accommodate pregnancy cases. Although the Court found that Title VII does not automatically entitle pregnant women to workplace accommodations, as a practical matter its modified burden of proof test creates a fine line between a failure to accommodate claim and an intentional pregnancy discrimination claim.
The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, ruling in the recent post-Young case of Hicks v. City of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, No. 16-13003 (11th Cir. September 7, 2017), observed that although Young does not disrupt “the abundance of case law” holding that employers are not required to provide special accommodations to breastfeeding workers, the court nevertheless found that the denial of a requested accommodation for a breastfeeding employee can violate Title VII when it amounts to a constructive discharge.
More specifically, the court held that a reasonable jury could find that the City’s denial of “alternative duties” requested by a female police officer to accommodate her breastfeeding amounted to constructive discharge because the City’s proffered accommodations put the officer’s life unduly at risk.
A copy of the Eleventh Circuit’s decision in Hicks is available here.
Members of the Center for Workplace Compliance (CWC) can read more here.