[2] Pregnancy discrimination has also been examined to have an indirect relationship with the decline of a mother's physical and mental health.
This bill sets forward procedures to enforce the law and protect pregnant employees from these discriminatory practices.
In 2002, California's Paid Family Leave (PFL) insurance program, also known as the Family Temporary Disability Insurance (FTDI) program, extended unemployment disability compensation to cover individuals who take time off work to bond with a new minor child.
The Supreme Court unanimously upheld the decision that this law was constitutional, as the state has a compelling interest in protecting the health of women.
The decision states that “healthy mothers are essential to vigorous offspring, [and therefore] the physical wellbeing of women is an object of public interest”.
But, this precedent about limiting working hours which was ultimately ignored by Muller v Oregon, because women’s role as a mother was found more important than this due process right.
Next, in 1974 Cleveland Board of Education v. LaFleur, the court decides that pregnant women cannot be discriminated against arbitrarily, as this violates the due process clause.
First, if the termination of teachers’ employment during the fourth or fifth month of pregnancy for the sake of continuity violates the fourteenth amendment.
And last, if requiring a submission of a certificate of health by the mother’s physician before returning to work violates the Fourteenth Amendment.
The fiscal and actuarial benefits of the program thus accrue to members of both sexes.The second case, General Electric v. Gilbert (1976), 429 U.S. 125, concluded that companies may exclude pregnancy-related conditions from being covered in their disability plans.
The issue before the Supreme Court was if excluding pregnancy-related coverage under the company's disability plan violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
General Electric provided coverage to their employees for nonoccupational illness and injury, but pregnancy-related conditions were excluded.
2013) case, the EEOC went to court with Houston Funding regarding unlawfully firing an employee for lactating at work after recently having given birth.
This decision ultimately became an important precedent that it is illegal to discharge an employee due to expressing milk or lactation.
In 2014 the Supreme Court heard Young v. United Parcel Service, in this case the Supreme Court sought to answer the question of if the Pregnancy Discrimination Act requires an employer to provide the same accommodations to a pregnant employee than to employees with similar non-pregnancy related work limitations.
It reaffirmed this position in Webb v EMO Air Cargo (No 2)[10] where a woman had been dismissed because she had attempted to take pregnancy leave, but had not disclosed this to her employer when hired.
[12] A woman is also allowed to shorten her maternity leave and return to work when she becomes pregnant again to get the second period of pregnancy, even though she is not fully able to carry out all her normal job functions.
However, a study published in The Netherlands is 2016 showed that 43% of active women experienced discrimination related to pregnancy of motherhood.
In Taiwan, pregnancy discrimination is considered a violation of sex-discrimination laws and are treated as such if an employer is found guilty.
In Cambodia abortion was legalized in 1997, yet 9 out of 10 Cambodian women believed that this action is illegal and undergo this process through unsafe clinics.
[27] Often the FDC of pregnant women are shortened as factories do not want to provide extra cost of maternity pays or any other health care.
After The United Nations created the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in 1981, Australia signed in agreement on August 17, 1983.
[29] Australia's government is having a hard time enforcing the Sexual Discrimination Act because employers are arguing that there is no way to prove their actions are based on the pregnancy of their female employees or interviewees.
Employers can base their choice to pass on a candidate by saying that the women won't be able to perform certain tasks entailed in the job.