Court: Paper Company Discriminated by Not Hiring Pregnant Woman
Gene Johnson
November 30, 2007 - 12:32 a.m.
SEATTLE (AP) - Longview Fibre Co. illegally discriminated against a woman when it refused to hire her as a clerk and order checker because she was pregnant, the state Supreme Court has ruled.
The paper company offered to hire Stacy Hegwine in February 2001 pending a physical examination, then rescinded the job offer when it learned she was pregnant, even though the pregnancy would not have interfered with her ability to do the work, Justice James M. Johnson wrote in the 9-0 opinion.
Johnson noted that there were no weightlifting requirements in the job posting, and when Hegwine interviewed for the post, company officials told her she'd have to be able to lift 25 pounds. When her doctor gave her permission to lift that much, the company boosted the requirement to 40 pounds. When the doctor cleared that, the company raised the requirement again, to 60 pounds.
The stated weightlifting requirements were clearly nothing more than a pretext to avoid hiring a pregnant woman, Johnson wrote.
"Fibre offered no evidence that excluding pregnant women was essential to the clerk/order checker position," he wrote.
Johnson also said that Longview Fibre, a unit of Brookfield Asset Management Inc., broke the law just by asking if Hegwine was pregnant before hiring her. Five other justices signed Johnson's opinion, while three signed a concurrence that agreed with the result using a slightly different legal analysis.
Hegwine, 32, of Kelso, worked at a furniture store — and was about to become a manager there — when she quit to take the Longview Fibre position, which offered better pay and benefits. After Longview rescinded the offer, she tried to get her old job back, but couldn't, said her lawyer, Mark Brumbaugh.
Hegwine was unable to find other work before her son was born on May 31, 2001, and had to rely on her husband's health benefits, which were less generous than those Longview offered, Brumbaugh said. Eventually she became a bus driver, and later took a clerical position at the Toutle River Boy's Ranch, a drug abuse prevention center.
In 2005, a Cowlitz County Superior Court judge, weighing the case under state disability discrimination laws, sided with Longview Fibre. But the state Court of Appeals said it's well-established that pregnancy is not a disability, and such cases should be decided under sex-discrimination laws. It sided with Hegwine, and the high court agreed.
"An employer's obligation to accommodate pregnant women is absolute, not subject to an analysis of whether such accommodation would be required under disability discrimination law," the Northwest Women's Law Center said Thursday in a written statement on the case. "Today's decision ... ensures equal opportunity for women and men in the workplace, in light of the fact that only women experience pregnancy and the sometimes related conditions that would require on-the-job accommodation or temporary leaves of absence."
The case now returns to Cowlitz County Superior Court to determine how much Longview must pay Hegwine. Brumbaugh said he would argue for economic damages, based on how much less money Hegwine made in her subsequent jobs than she would have made at Longview, and for other damages, including pain-and-suffering.
The company did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
