Is it permissible to penalize retiring women for pregnancy-related disability leaves that they took before the law required employers to treat such leaves like all other disability leaves? In its 7–2 ruling in AT&T v. Hulteen, the Supreme Court said yes, leaving in place a disturbing relic of a discriminatory past with real present-day consequences.

PREGNANCY AND PENSIONS AT AT&T

Hulteen involves a group of female employees who took unpaid leaves for disability related to pregnancy between 1968 and 1974. Pursuant to AT&T's policies in place at the time, an employee who took “disability” leave from work received full service credit (that is, credit for having worked for the full period during which he or she was disabled), no matter how long the leave. In contrast, an employee who took leave related to pregnancy – even if she was temporarily disabled by the pregnancy – could receive service credit for no more than thirty days. (An uncredited leave resulted in the employee's “start date” at AT&T being adjusted forward to the extent of the leave.) In 1977, the company adopted a new policy, which entitled employees with pregnancy-related disability to receive both benefits and service credit for six weeks, but neither benefits nor credit thereafter. Again, employees who took other disability leaves were entitled to full service credit.

Like many other companies, AT&T amended its leave policy in 1979 to comply with the newly enacted Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA). Prior to the PDA's enactment, the Supreme Court had ruled, in General Electric Co. v. Gilbert, that Title VII's ban on sex discrimination in employment did not include pregnancy discrimination. It was perfectly legal for an employer to treat employees differently because of pregnancy. Gilbert, though, was overruled by the PDA, giving pregnant employees, among other things, the right to be treated the same as comparably disabled employees with respect to all benefits, including seniority calculations.

Thus, AT&T could no longer grant less credit and fewer benefits to workers who took pregnancy-related disability leave than it did to those who took leave for other types of disability without violating federal law (although it could freely deny leave to both).