Young v. United Parcel Service

Facts

The Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 added subsection (k) to Title VII’s definitions. Its first clause specifies that Title VII’s “ter[m] ‘because of sex’ . . . include[s] . . . because of or on the basis of pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions.” Its second clause — the provision this case construes — says that “women affected by pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions shall be treated the same for all employment-related purposes . . . as other persons not so affected but similar in their ability or inability to work.” (42 U.S.C. § 2000e(k); Young v. United Parcel Service, Inc., supra, 575 U.S. at p. 212.) The question the Court set for itself was “how this latter provision applies in the context of an employer’s policy that accommodates many, but not all, workers with nonpregnancy-related disabilities.” (Id. at p. 210.)

Peggy Young worked as a part-time driver for United Parcel Service, picking up and delivering packages that had arrived by air. In 2006, after suffering several miscarriages, she became pregnant, and her doctor advised that she not lift more than 20 pounds during the first 20 weeks of pregnancy or more than 10 pounds thereafter. UPS required drivers like Young to be able to lift parcels weighing up to 70 pounds (150 with assistance). UPS told Young she could not work under a lifting restriction; she “consequently stayed home without pay during most of the time she was pregnant and eventually lost her employee medical coverage.” (Young, supra, 575 U.S. at p. 211.)

The dispute was framed by whom UPS did accommodate. Under its collective-bargaining agreement, UPS provided temporary alternative work to employees unable to perform their normal assignments due to an on-the-job injury; it promised good-faith efforts to accommodate permanent disabilities under the ADA; and it gave “inside” jobs to drivers who lost their Department of Transportation certifications because of a failed medical exam, a lost license, or a motor-vehicle accident. (Young, supra, 575 U.S. at pp. 211–212, 215.) Young’s evidence — viewed, at summary judgment, in the light most favorable to her — showed UPS accommodating drivers with lifting limits, foot, arm, knee, and ankle injuries, strokes, sleep apnea, high blood pressure, DUI-suspended certifications, and off-the-job injuries including cancer. (Id. at pp. 216–217.) When Young asked UPS’s capital division manager to accommodate her, he allegedly replied that while pregnant she was “too much of a liability” and could “not come back” until she “‘was no longer pregnant.’” (Id. at p. 215.) A UPS shop steward with roughly a decade at the company testified that “the only light duty requested [due to physical] restrictions that became an issue” at UPS “were with women who were pregnant.” (Id. at p. 217.)

Procedural history

Young filed an EEOC charge in July 2007, received a right-to-sue letter in September 2008, and sued in the District of Maryland, asserting both direct evidence of pregnancy discrimination and a prima facie case under McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green (1973) 411 U.S. 792. (Young, supra, 575 U.S. at p. 214.) The district court granted UPS summary judgment: the on-the-job, DOT, and ADA beneficiaries were “too different to qualify as ‘similarly situated comparator[s],’” and UPS had in any event offered a legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason that Young had not shown to be pretextual. (Id. at p. 217.)

The Fourth Circuit affirmed, reasoning that “UPS has crafted a pregnancy-blind policy” that was “at least facially a ‘neutral and legitimate business practice,’ and not evidence of UPS’s discriminatory animus toward pregnant workers.” (Young, supra, 575 U.S. at p. 217, quoting 784 F.3d 192, 201.) In the court of appeals’ view, Young resembled “an employee who injured his back while picking up his infant child or . . . an employee whose lifting limitation arose from her off-the-job work as a volunteer firefighter” — neither of whom UPS would accommodate. (Id. at p. 218, quoting 784 F.3d at p. 203.) The Supreme Court granted certiorari “[i]n light of lower-court uncertainty” over the PDA’s second clause, citing a split among the Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and Eleventh Circuits. (Id. at p. 218.)

Issue

When an employer accommodates some categories of workers with lifting or duty restrictions but declines to accommodate pregnant employees with comparable restrictions, how does a pregnant worker prove disparate treatment under the PDA’s command that she be treated “the same . . . as other persons not so affected but similar in their ability or inability to work”? More precisely: who are the “other persons” to whom she must be compared, and what role do the employer’s facially neutral eligibility categories play? (Young, supra, 575 U.S. at pp. 210, 219–220.)

Holding

Reasoning

The interpretive puzzle: three readings of “treated the same.” Justice Breyer opened with the analytic landscape of disparate-treatment law: liability “depends on whether the protected trait actually motivated the employer’s decision,” provable by direct evidence or through McDonnell Douglas burden-shifting. (Young, supra, 575 U.S. at pp. 212–213.) The PDA’s second clause was the difficulty. Did it require comparing workers only by their work limitations? Did it permit the employer’s facially neutral categories — on-the-job injury, ADA disability, lost DOT certification — to define who counts as a comparator? (Id. at pp. 219–220.)

Rejecting Young’s “most-favored-nation” reading. Young argued that once an employer accommodates any subset of workers with disabling conditions, it must accommodate all pregnant workers with comparable limitations. The Court held this “proves too much”: it would grant pregnant workers “a ‘most-favored-nation’ status,” compelling identical accommodations regardless of the neutral criteria — hazardous duty, tenure, job category — that explain why some workers get benefits others do not. (Young, supra, 575 U.S. at p. 221.) “We doubt that Congress intended to grant pregnant workers an unconditional most-favored-nation status.” (Id. at p. 222.) Disparate-treatment law ordinarily tolerates neutral policies supported by “a legitimate, nondiscriminatory, nonpretextual reason,” and nothing in the Act’s text or history — the House Report said the statute “reflect[s] no new legislative mandate” — suggested a deviation. (Id. at pp. 222–223.)

Rejecting the Solicitor General’s reliance on the EEOC’s 2014 guideline. The government urged deference to the EEOC’s July 2014 guidance, which would forbid policies distinguishing by “the source of an employee’s limitations (e.g., a policy of providing light duty only to workers injured on the job).” (Young, supra, 575 U.S. at p. 224.) Applying Skidmore v. Swift & Co. (1944) 323 U.S. 134, the Court found the guideline’s “power to persuade” “severely limit[ed]” by problems of “timing, ‘consistency,’ and ‘thoroughness’ of ‘consideration’”: it issued only after certiorari was granted, took a position earlier guidelines had not, contradicted positions the government itself had long litigated, and came without explanation. (Id. at p. 225.)

Rejecting UPS’s reading: the second clause must add something, and Gilbert must stay overruled. UPS contended the second clause merely defines sex discrimination to include pregnancy discrimination — but the first clause already “accomplishes that objective,” and a statute should be construed so that “no clause” is rendered “‘superfluous, void, or insignificant.’” (Young, supra, 575 U.S. at p. 226, quoting TRW Inc. v. Andrews (2001) 534 U.S. 19, 31.) More fundamentally, UPS’s reading “would fail to carry out an important congressional objective”: overturning “both the holding and the reasoning” of General Electric Co. v. Gilbert (1976) 429 U.S. 125. (Id. at p. 227.) The Gilbert plan had excluded pregnancy on exactly the kind of “neutral ground” UPS invoked — it covered sicknesses and accidents, and pregnancy was neither. Accepting UPS’s interpretation “would not overturn Gilbert in full — in particular, it would not respond to Gilbert’s determination that an employer can treat pregnancy less favorably than diseases or disabilities resulting in a similar inability to work.” (Ibid.) Here the Court leaned on California Federal Savings & Loan Assn. v. Guerra (1987) 479 U.S. 272: the first clause “reflects Congress’ disapproval of the reasoning in Gilbert,” while the second “was intended to overrule the holding in Gilbert and to illustrate how discrimination against pregnancy is to be remedied.” (Id. at pp. 227–228, quoting Guerra, at pp. 284–285.)

The middle path: McDonnell Douglas, adapted to the accommodation context. The Court’s solution runs through the familiar three steps with two pregnancy-specific refinements. The prima facie case is “not onerous” and does not demand comparators “similar in all but the protected ways”: the plaintiff shows protected-class membership, a request for accommodation, refusal, and accommodation of others “similar in their ability or inability to work.” (Young, supra, 575 U.S. at pp. 228–229.) At step two, the employer’s justification “normally cannot consist simply of a claim that it is more expensive or less convenient” to include pregnant women — “[a]fter all, the employer in Gilbert could in all likelihood have made just such a claim.” (Id. at p. 229.) And at step three, pretext takes a distinctive shape: significant burden plus insufficient justification. A plaintiff “can create a genuine issue of material fact as to whether a significant burden exists by providing evidence that the employer accommodates a large percentage of nonpregnant workers while failing to accommodate a large percentage of pregnant workers.” (Id. at pp. 229–230.) On Young’s facts, UPS’s multiple accommodation policies invited the pointed question: “why, when the employer accommodated so many, could it not accommodate pregnant women as well?” (Id. at p. 231.)

Application — and a limited disposition. Young’s comparator evidence created “a genuine dispute as to whether UPS provided more favorable treatment to at least some employees whose situation cannot reasonably be distinguished from Young’s.” (Young, supra, 575 U.S. at p. 231.) The Fourth Circuit had considered neither “the combined effects” of UPS’s three policies nor “the strength of UPS’ justifications for each when combined.” (Ibid.) But the Court stopped short of resolving pretext itself: “We do not determine whether Young created a genuine issue of material fact as to whether UPS’ reasons for having treated Young less favorably than it treated these other nonpregnant employees were pretextual.” (Id. at p. 232.) The Court also flagged that the ADA Amendments Act of 2008 — which reaches temporary lifting restrictions — “may limit the future significance of our interpretation of the Act,” expressly reserving any view of those changes. (Id. at pp. 218–219.)

Justice Alito’s narrower concurrence. Concurring in the judgment, Justice Alito read the second clause as an independent, intent-free command of equal treatment, with two limiting constructions: pregnant employees “must be compared with employees performing the same or very similar jobs” (Young, supra, 575 U.S. at p. 235 (conc. opn. of Alito, J.)), and unequal treatment is permissible only where a “neutral business reason” explains it — though, agreeing with the Court, a sufficient reason “normally cannot consist simply of a claim that it is more expensive or less convenient” to accommodate pregnant employees (id. at pp. 237–238). Applying that test, he found UPS’s on-the-job and ADA categories neutrally explicable, but not the DOT category: “It does not appear that respondent has provided any plausible justification for treating these drivers more favorably than drivers who were pregnant.” (Id. at pp. 239–240.) It was “not at all clear that respondent had any neutral business ground” for the difference. (Id. at p. 241.)

The dissents. Justice Scalia, joined by Justices Kennedy and Thomas, accused the majority of inventing “a new law that is splendidly unconnected with the text,” deriding the significant-burden/sufficient-justification test as “[i]nventiveness posing as scholarship.” (Young, supra, 575 U.S. at p. 241 (dis. opn. of Scalia, J.).) For the dissent, the same-treatment clause requires only that accommodations be available “on the same terms” — pregnancy-blind eligibility rules satisfy it, and the contrary reading “would elevate pregnant workers to most favored employees. If Boeing offered chauffeurs to injured directors, it would have to offer chauffeurs to pregnant mechanics.” (Id. at pp. 243–244.) The majority’s framework, he charged, smuggles disparate-impact analysis into disparate-treatment law — an “ersatz disparate-impact test” with different remedies and no textual warrant. (Id. at pp. 248–249.) Justice Kennedy joined Scalia but wrote separately to underscore that pregnant workers “confront a serious disadvantage” rooted in “the pervasive presumption that women are mothers first, and workers second” — and to catalog the statutory responses, expressly citing California’s Government Code section 12945 and Guerra as the model of state-law accommodation mandates the PDA leaves untouched. (Id. at pp. 251–253 (dis. opn. of Kennedy, J.).)

Significance

Young is the controlling federal framework for pregnancy-accommodation claims pleaded as disparate treatment under Title VII. Its doctrinal signature is the pretext stage: unlike the ordinary McDonnell Douglas third step, Young lets a plaintiff prove intentional discrimination with structural evidence — the percentage of nonpregnant workers accommodated versus pregnant workers refused, and the weakness of the employer’s reasons measured against that burden. (575 U.S. at pp. 229–230.) That is what provoked the dissent’s conflation charge, and it remains the framework’s most litigated feature: it imports an effects-and-justifications inquiry into an intent doctrine, while formally remaining “limited to the Pregnancy Discrimination Act context.” (Id. at p. 230.)

The Court itself signaled the framework’s built-in obsolescence. Part I-D notes that the ADA Amendments Act of 2008 now sweeps temporary lifting restrictions into disability law, which “may limit the future significance of our interpretation.” (Young, supra, 575 U.S. at pp. 218–219.) The trajectory continued after Young: federal law has since layered affirmative accommodation duties over the PDA’s comparative one, and state statutes — California’s first among them — had long since made the comparative exercise unnecessary at home. The through-line from Guerra matters here: Guerra establishes that the PDA is a floor states may build above, and Young defines what that federal floor requires of employers when no state statute applies. Even the Young dissenters treated California’s regime as the exemplar of that state-law layer. (Id. at pp. 252–253 (dis. opn. of Kennedy, J.) [citing Gov. Code, § 12945 and Guerra].)

For California employment lawyers, the practical point is that Young’s burden-shifting is rarely the best available theory. The Pregnancy Disability Leave Law entitles an employee disabled by pregnancy to up to four months of leave “regardless of any hardship to her employer” (Sanchez v. Swissport, Inc. (2013) 213 Cal.App.4th 1331, 1338), the FEHA defines “sex” to include pregnancy (id. at p. 1337, citing Gov. Code, § 12926, subd. (q)(1)), and Government Code section 12945, subdivision (a)(3)(A) grants an affirmative right to reasonable accommodation for conditions related to pregnancy on the advice of a health care provider (see Lopez v. La Casa de Las Madres (2023) 89 Cal.App.5th 365). None of these rights depends on how the employer treats anyone else. The comparator hunt that consumed the better part of a decade of Peggy Young’s litigation is, in California, usually beside the point — which is precisely why Young’s importance in this state is confined to the pure Title VII posture: federal-forum cases pleading only federal claims, or workforces outside the FEHA’s reach.

Key quotes

“[A] plaintiff alleging that the denial of an accommodation constituted disparate treatment under the Pregnancy Discrimination Act’s second clause may make out a prima facie case by showing, as in McDonnell Douglas, that she belongs to the protected class, that she sought accommodation, that the employer did not accommodate her, and that the employer did accommodate others ‘similar in their ability or inability to work.’” (Young, supra, 575 U.S. at p. 229.)

“[T]hat reason normally cannot consist simply of a claim that it is more expensive or less convenient to add pregnant women to the category of those (‘similar in their ability or inability to work’) whom the employer accommodates. After all, the employer in Gilbert could in all likelihood have made just such a claim.” (Young, supra, 575 U.S. at p. 229.)

“[W]hy, when the employer accommodated so many, could it not accommodate pregnant women as well?” (Young, supra, 575 U.S. at p. 231.)

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Practice pointer

Open questions

Young announced a framework and decided almost nothing else. The Court left for remand whether Young herself had shown pretext. (Young, supra, 575 U.S. at p. 232.) It quantified neither of its new terms: how large a disparity makes a burden “significant,” and what makes a justification “sufficiently strong,” were left to case-by-case development — the dissent’s central complaint. (Id. at pp. 229, 247–249 (dis. opn. of Scalia, J.).) It expressly reserved any view of the ADA Amendments Act and the EEOC’s implementing regulations, which now reach many temporary lifting restrictions like Young’s and may leave the PDA framework governing a shrinking class of cases. (Id. at pp. 218–219.) Because Young pleaded neither theory, the Court had no occasion to address disparate impact or pattern-or-practice claims under the PDA. (Id. at pp. 213–214.) And Young leaves open how, if at all, its pretext gloss travels: California courts apply McDonnell Douglas to FEHA claims through Guz v. Bechtel National, Inc. (2000) 24 Cal.4th 317, but no published California decision has needed to decide whether Young’s significant-burden showing applies to a FEHA pregnancy claim — largely because the PDLL and section 12940 make the comparative framework unnecessary.