Accommodating Pregnancy Five Years After Young v. UPS : Where We Are & Where We Should Go

This Article will explore how pregnant employees fare when they are denied accommodations in the workplace that would have allowed them to work safely through their pregnancies. The two most commonly used legal avenues for pregnant plaintiffs are the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA) and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Successful cases under the ADA were very rare until Congress expanded the ADA's definition of disability in 2008. And PDA claims became easier after the Supreme Court's 2015 decision in Young v. United Parcel Service, Inc.1 Five years after that decision, this Article will analyze the body of PDA cases decided since Young, and all of the ADA cases where pregnancy is the claimed disability since the ADA was amended in 2008. Although the picture is not quite rosy for pregnant plaintiffs, it is perhaps more positive than many scholars predicted it would be. Nevertheless, there remain many gaps in protection — some caused by the statutes' limitations — but many caused by litigants' and judges' inability (or unwillingness) to properly interpret these two statutes. This Article will explain where we are and explore options for where we should go in the future