Supreme Court Hears AT&T Corp. v. Hulteen Gender Bias Case

Noreen Hulteen, a Pacific Telephone and Telegraph (PT & T) employee, wasn't thinking about her pension when she went out on maternity leave in 1968. Like any other woman in her situation, she was focused on the birth of her baby. As it turned out, the baby was fine but she wasn't. After labor and delivery she was hospitalized for a medical condition requiring surgery. Between her pregnancy and surgery, she missed a total of 240 days of work.

Forty years later, Noreen Hulteen's absence from work became the basis of AT&T Corp. v. Hulteen, a case heard by the United States Supreme Court on December 10, 2008.

Under company policy, Hulteen was given only 30 days of paid maternity leave by her employer. However, employees out on disability leave were entitled to be paid as long as they were disabled The Supreme Court case hinges on the fact that when Hulteen retired in 1994, her current employer AT&T (which had long since taken over PT&T in 1984) calculated her pension benefits by excluding the 210 days past her maternity leave - 210 days that it would have paid her for had her leave been due to any disability caused by any medical condition other than pregnancy.

At the heart of the matter is the question of gender discrimination: Can a company reduce a female employee's pension benefits for a maternity leave taken prior to the passage of the 1978 Pregnancy Discrimination Act, even if those pensions are paid out after 1979 when such maternity-leave reductions in pension became illegal?

Charlotte Fishman, a San Francisco employment discrimination attorney, writes about the case at Today's Workplace and describes the chilly climate experienced by women working in telecommunications at the time of Hulteen's pregnancy:

Before 1978, it was standard practice in the telecommunications industry to treat pregnant employees differently from employees who were temporarily disabled for other reasons. Company policy forced pregnant women to take “personal” leave while they were still able to work. It did not permit them to accrue “service credit” while on leave, and upon return, credited them with only 30 days of “service” regardless of the actual duration of the leave. Upon return to work, new mothers had their “date of hire” moved forward – as if they had joined the company later than their actual first day of employment. Noreen Hulteen lost 210 days of service credit under this systemic practice.

By contrast, employees temporarily disabled by conditions other than pregnancy continued to accrue service credit while on leave, and retained full seniority when they returned to work. AT&T tracked and perpetuated this disparate treatment by a device known as the adjusted NCS [“net credited service”] date.

Hulteen, along with other long-term PT&T employees Eleanora Collet, Linda Porter, and Elizabeth Snyder Hulteen, filed charges with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against AT&T challenging the pension benefit calculation. The EEOC found reasonable cause that AT&T had engaged in discrimination.

As reported in On the Docket: U.S. Supreme Court News:

In 2001, Hulteen and several other women sued AT&T, alleging that its decision to pay them smaller pensions because of their pregnancy disability leaves constituted an unlawful employment practice under the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, an amendment to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of pregnancy and allows those on maternity leave the same coverage as other medical leave.

The case eventually made its way to the Supreme Court where it was argued on December 2008. An article in the New York Times notes:

The argument...was full of references to one of the court’s more controversial decisions in recent years — the 2007 ruling against Lilly M. Ledbetter.

Ms. Ledbetter lost her case because she had discovered the disparity between her pay and that of her male colleagues too late.

The later effects of past discrimination, the court ruled last year in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, a 5-to-4 decision, do not restart the clock on the statute of limitations....

AT&T v. Hulteen, No. 07-543, raised broadly similar issues....AT&T responded [that]....if it had done something wrong...the plaintiffs should have sued long ago, and they would be barred by the statute of limitations from suing now.

That was, the company said, consistent with Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.’s opinion for the majority in the Ledbetter case. “Current effects alone,” Justice Alito wrote last year, “cannot breathe life into prior, uncharged discrimination.”

According to the American Bar Association Journal, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy is the swing voter most likely to determine the outcome of the court's decision:

Kennedy...appeared to favor AT&T over female workers...He indicated concern about the effects of a potential ruling in favor of female workers who claimAT&T discriminated against them....

Kennedy was in the majority in a 5-4 decision denying the equal pay claim of Lilly Ledbetter, who sued because she was making $6,000 less than the lowest-paid man doing similar work. The majority held that the time for filing a pay discrimination complaint begins running with the original salary decision, and there is not a new violation with each new paycheck.

A ruling in the case is expected in the first half of 2009.

_{Sources:
"AT&T Corp. v. Hulteen: Justices will hear pregnancy leave discrimination case." On The Docket: U.S. Supreme Court News, 23 June 2008.
Fishman, Charlotte. "No Supreme Court Bail-Out for AT&T!" TodaysWorkplace.org, 26 Friday 2008.
Liptak, Adam. "Justices Hear Bias Case on Maternity, Pensions and Timing." New York Times at NYTimes.com, 10 December 2008.
"United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, Noreen HULTEEN; Eleanora Collet, Linda Porter; Elizabeth Snyder; Communications Workers of America, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. AT & T CORPORATION, Defendant-Appellant." AltLaw.org, 20 October 2005.
Weiss, Debra Cassens. "Swing Voter Kennedy Sympathetic to AT&T in Leave Bias Case." ABAJournal.com, 11 December 2008.}