The Court of Appeals has ruled that a trial court was able to rule against a woman who claimed that a county jail's light duty policy had a disparate impact against pregnant women, even though the policy only allowed CO's with job-related injuries to take light-duty assignments, requiring pregnant women who did not want to risk injury to miss work and forfeit pay.
The case is Legg v. County of Ulster, a summary order issued on October 29. I tried the case and argued the appeal. This was a bench trial. Plaintiff said the light-duty rule discriminated against women because, unlike men who suffered work-related injuries, they were not able to take light duty if they feared suffering an injury resulting from their pregnancy. As you may have heard, only women can get pregnant; that's the gender connection here. Her fears were borne out: late in her pregnancy, Legg came close to serious injury when an inmate fight broke out, requiring her to miss work under the policy. Following that event, Legg did miss work, as the injury caused her significant stress and she was close to term.
When Legg first sought light-duty under the policy, she handed in a doctor's note that said she should not have direct contact with inmates. The Sheriff told Legg that the light-duty policy did not apply because she did not have a work-related injury. So two days later, Legg came in with a new doctor's note that said she could work. She argued at trial that the second note was written up because she could not afford to miss work. The trial court, however, credited the second note but discounted the relevance of the first note because the second note said she could work without restrictions. On that basis, the case was dismissed.
Legg appeals from that ruling. It is difficult to appeal from a bench verdict that turns on disputed facts. Legg argued that the trial court got it wrong because the second note that cleared her to work was written solely out of financial need, not because her health concerns had dissipated overnight. The Court of Appeals rejects that argument under the theory that the trial court's factual findings are entitled to great deference on appeal. The Court of Appeals (Lynch, Carney and Hall) rules that the Pregnancy Discrimination Act requires plaintiffs to show that "some pregnancy women are similar in their ability or inability to work" to non-pregnant employees, and that plaintiffs cannot win simply by requesting that the district court "assume that pregnant women are inherently incapable of full duty. While the conflicting doctor's notes are susceptible to different interpretations, the appellate court does not think the trial court's view of the evidence was clearly erroneous, the heightened standard in challenging a trial court's factual findings. The Second Circuit further notes that the doctor's notes in this case were conclusory and did not provide enough information to support his medical recommendations.
The Second Circuit notes that the district court overlooked some evidence, including the fact that Legg had again requested a light-duty position later on in her pregnancy, and that she did suffer a serious health-related condition as a result of working closely with inmates late in her pregnancy, when the fight broke out. Still, the Second Circuit holds, plaintiff cannot overcome the trial court's ultimate factual findings on whether she suffered disparate impact discrimination. The Court of Appeals does note that plaintiffs in these cases are not required to show that policies like this have a statistically significant impact on women, an impossible burden in cases like this were few women worked as correction officers at the jail. In the end, while the Court of Appeals is sympathetic to Legg's Hobson's choice between working at full pay and missing work to protect her baby at reduced pay, "we are compelled to conclude that the district court did not clearly err in finding that the evidence presented by Legg was insufficient to sustain her claim."
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