Vol. 78/No. 46      December 22, 2014

Seven years ago, Peggy Young, a UPS driver, was denied light duty while pregnant, despite her doctor’s recommendation that she not lift more than 20 pounds. “We’re not making an accommodation for her because she is not disabled,” the company said. As a result, Young took unpaid leave and lost her medical coverage for childbirth.

Tiffany Beroid, of OUR Walmart, a group of Walmart workers fighting for $15 per hour and full-time work, spoke at the rally. A customer service manager at the Walmart store in Laurel, Maryland, she was terminated in 2012 after publication of a Washington Post article featuring her fight with the retail store for light duty when she was pregnant.

“I had to push carts and lift heavy boxes,” Beroid told reporters after the rally, in spite of swollen feet, dizziness and high blood pressure.

In 1976, the Supreme Court ruled that companies that did not include pregnancy disability plans were not discriminating based on gender. Congress responded by passing the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978, which says that sex discrimination includes discrimination on the basis of “pregnancy, childbirth or related medical conditions,” and directs employers to treat pregnant workers the same “as other persons not so affected but similar in their ability or inability to work.”

The rally was co-sponsored by 40 groups, including the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Coalition of Labor Union Women, Center for American Progress, NARAL Pro-Choice America, MomsRising and the National Organization for Women. Briefs in support of Young have been filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, a wide range of union organizations, women’s rights groups and the U.S. government.

Two dozen anti-abortion groups also filed a brief supporting Young, arguing that failure to defend the rights of pregnant women on the job could lead some to seek an abortion in order to keep working.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Trucking Associations, Inc. were among those filing briefs in support of UPS.

“No women should have to choose between her paycheck and her pregnancy,” said Kathleen Morrell from Physicians for Reproductive Health at the rally.

Emma Sholevitz, 27, and eight months pregnant, attended the rally. She was recently fired from her job at General Dynamics as a research technician and website developer. Sholevitz had asked supervisors why pregnant employees had to work up to their due date. “My position was terminated,” she said.

“Peggy Young was seven years old when the Pregnancy Discrimination Act became law,” Sharon Fast Gustafson, Young’s lawyer, said at the rally “And here we are 36 years later, asking the court to hold simply that the Pregnancy Discrimination Act means what it says.”  
 
 
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