The judge who ruled that Bloomberg LP did not illegally discriminate against women for taking pregnancy leave raised an important policy question in her written opinion. Judge Preska did not drop "an anvil…on the work-life balance scale," despite commentators' efforts to portray her decision as a calculated blow against work-life balance; in deciding in Bloomberg's favor, all she did was follow the existing law. In her commentary, however, she questioned the wisdom of law itself, and noted that one alternative might be for employers to "treat pregnant women and mothers better or more leniently than others." Judge Preska did not say whether she thinks that would be a good idea. It is a dreadful idea.
The judge's legal reasoning in the Bloomberg ruling is by the book. The federal law bans pregnancy discrimination as a form of gender discrimination, as it should – only women get pregnant. The law does not require employers to treat pregnant women better than other employees, just not to treat them worse. Based on the evidence Judge Preska summarized in her decision, Bloomberg LP did not treat women who took pregnancy leave worse than other leave-takers; to the contrary, if that evidence is to be believed (in an earlier ruling Judge Preska threw out the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's expert witnesses, leaving the evidence lopsided in Bloomberg's favor), women returning from maternity leave may have fared slightly better in terms of compensation than employees returning from other kinds of leave.
The evidence also showed that taking leave for any reason is not a wise career move at Bloomberg. The company policy is, in essence, that employees must put Bloomberg LP ahead of God, country, family, and whatever else figures in their particular pursuits of happiness. Bloomberg scoffs at work-life balance, and while that might be poor business judgment or even reprehensible, Judge Preska was correct that it is not against the law.
Judge Preska makes it clear that the law, whether she likes it or not, grants employers the right to ignore and even discourage workers' lives outside of work. She quotes former General Electric CEO Jack Welch's grim assessment that there is “no such thing as work-life balance. There are work-life choices, and you make them, and they have consequences.”
Article comments
1 - Tommy Mack
It won’t be long before the GOP grabs ahold of something like this case to go after the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, in general because the 1978 Pregnancy Discrimination Act is a Carter Administration law. Not only that, the PDA (P.L. 95-555) amends the sex discrimination section of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a Johnson Administration law for which the Republican Party has demonstrable enmity.
Tommy
2 - Dr Dreadful
Federal law is clear and unequivocal that you cannot discriminate on the grounds of pregnancy. Whether refraining from doing so has the effect of giving pregnant women an unfair advantage is, frankly, irrelevant to this case.
That said, I don't think the judge had much choice, especially since what exactly it was that Bloomberg was supposed to have done is buried in a morass of anecdotes and hearsay.