SCOTUS rules on Automobile Workers v. Johnson Controls, Inc, March 20, 1991
On this day in 1991, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that employers could not exclude women from jobs where exposure to toxic chemicals could potentially harm their fetuses.
In 1982, Johnson Controls barred female employees from working on lead-battery production lines because of the potential damage to a fetus that the women might carry. They were allowed to work there only if they could prove that “…their inability to bear children had been medically documented.”Continue Reading
In 1984, the United Auto Workers sued the company on behalf of Mary Craig, who had decided to be sterilized rather than lose her job; Elsie Nason, who was transferred from the battery production line to a lower-paying job; and Donald Penney, who had been denied a request for a leave of absence so he could lower his blood lead levels before trying to father a child. The union claimed the company’s policy violated the equal employment provisions of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
The U.S. District Court granted a summary judgment for the company. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit affirmed that ruling, holding that the company’s fetal-protection policy “is reasonably necessary to further the industrial safety concern that is part of [its] business.”
But the Supreme Court unanimously reversed those decisions. In his opinion, Justice Harry Blackmun ruled that “… it is no more important for the courts than it is for individual employers to decide whether a woman’s reproductive role is more important to herself and her family than her economic role.”
Blackmun wrote that “the policy is not neutral,” as the civil rights law demands, “because it does not apply to male employees in the same way as it applies to females, despite evidence about the debilitating effect of lead exposure on the male reproductive system.”
SOURCE: AUTOMOBILE WORKERS v. JOHNSON CONTROLS, INC., 499 U.S. 187 (1991)
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