Dive Brief:
- iPro Dental Laboratories, a Florida manufacturer of dental restoration products, fired a newly hired office assistant because she was pregnant, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleged in a Sept. 23 lawsuit, EEOC v. iPro Dental Laboratory, Inc.
- The day after the office assistant began working at iPro’s Fort Lauderdale location, she left early to attend a previously approved doctor’s appointment, according to the complaint. She provided the general manager with paperwork showing the appointment was with an OB-GYN provider, and the general manager allegedly asked her if she was pregnant. She said she was. iPro fired her three days later, EEOC alleged.
- The general manager allegedly told the worker the company was cutting back on expenses, but its financial status hadn’t changed in the week she was employed, according to the complaint. She also successfully performed her duties and hadn’t been disciplined or reprimanded, the lawsuit alleged.
Dive Insight:
EEOC sued iPro for allegedly firing her because she was pregnant, in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended by the Pregnancy Discrimination Act.
Under the PDA, an employer can’t take adverse action against an employee if her pregnancy is a motivating factor in the decision, an EEOC FAQ explains.
Plaintiffs can raise questions about an employer’s motive in several ways, according to an EEOC enforcement guidance. One way is to show close timing, or “temporal proximity,” between when the employer learned of the pregnancy and the challenged action, the guidance points out.
Temporal proximity can also be used as evidence of retaliation or other types of discrimination, but there’s no clear cut-off for when timing is no longer relevant, a 2024 post by the Phillips & Associate law firm notes.
In one EEOC example, a court found the plaintiff met her initial burden of creating an inference of discrimination because evidence indicated the day after she disclosed her pregnancy, her supervisor started keeping written notes about her, and she was fired a month later. In another example, a court found that two months between the pregnancy disclosure and the plaintiff’s termination was close enough in time to suggest discrimination.
By contrast, in a Sept. 12 ruling on a retaliation claim, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held that a four-month gap between when an HR director opposed what she believed was an unlawful promotion and her termination was too long to indicate a connection.
Plaintiffs can also raise questions about an employer’s motives with evidence that casts doubt on the employer’s stated reason for taking the challenged action, the guidance states.
In February, a court found an HR business partner did both: She produced evidence showing that less than a month after she disclosed her pregnancy, her superior proposed terminating her, and the company engaged in a “sudden and unprecedented campaign to document [her] deficiencies,” even though she had no prior record of being disciplined.
