Controversial Policy

Controversial Policy

Introduction

Coming into the 20th century, many countries allowed restrictions on the type of jobs women could hold (such as industrial work) on the basis that it could impair their ability to bear children. In addition, women could be required to leave their job if they became pregnant. Such laws were meant to be protective of mothers, but had the effect of limiting their ability to support their children. Since the 1960s, many countries have passed laws forbidding discrimination against women and requiring the health insurance companies cover the costs of pregnancy and childbirth, and more recently many have also passed laws protecting mother by granting paid maternal leave and prohibiting employers from firing them while pregnant or on leave.

But how does the law regulate, mediate, and otherwise understand motherhood? From Supreme Court cases and state laws to tacit regulation, women's lives as mothers are continually governed.

Discussion

Recently, at the thirtieth anniversary of the federal PDA or Pregnancy Discrimination Act, lawyers of women rights and civil rights have pointed to a different form of pregnancy discrimination in the United States that will impact female workers, retired or about to retire. Under the Act of Pregnancy Discrimination, inequity on the basis of childbirth, pregnancy or interrelated medical conditions is illegal discrimination of sex. The Supreme Court in the AT&T v. Hulteen, No. 07-543 examined the case of 4 women in December 2008, including 30-year employee Noreen Hulteen, who entered the workforce and got maternity leaves ahead of the PDA was passed. Each of them got less “service credit” for their maternity leaves as compare to the staff at Pacific T&T (which is at the moment a component of AT&T, Inc.), who applied leave for other conditions of disability. Upon retirement (or preparation for retirement), their pensions were computed by AT&T using the former, unfair service credits. Later than losing in the ninth United States Circuit Court of Appeals, contended its pre Pregnancy Discrimination Act refutation of service credits was legal, claiming the bylaw must not be applied retroactively.

The United States Supreme Court in May 2009 held that since Congress did not plan the PDA to relate retroactively, the calculation of pension benefit employed by AT&T before the acting out of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act was legal and must be deemed as a bona fide pre eminence system resist to the challenges of Title VII. By categorizing pregnancy as a private leave, instead of a disability leave, workers were only salaried for and got service credit for the initial thirty days of leave (instead of the complete episode of the leave, as underneath the salaried disability leave). In the case of Hulteen, when she got retired in the year 1994, she had around 210 days of un-credited leave for pregnancy that resulted in lessening her eligibility for retirement fund or pension. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in her rebellious inference of the case marked, “Some attitudes regarding pregnancy and child delivery, all the way through the human history, have continued enveloping, sometimeslaw-sanctioned, limitations on ...