bigtoughralf wrote:Didn't you say it is about leave though. The advisor-turned-amateur-lawyer would presumably have an easier time arguing that providing sick leave benefits for abortion is discrimination if similar benefits aren't provided to employees taking sick leave relating to a disability, as that could potentially be disability discrimination.
That line of argument wouldn't give him a chance to get paid to obsess over his pregnancy fetish though, which is presumably why he isn't pursuing it.
Well the benefit given to an employee on medical leave must be equal regardless of childbearing status; if someone hasn't given birth yet they'd be on medical leave, and if they'd given birth they'd be on parental leave. But the benefit is not the leave itself, rather it's the expense-paid holidays that are only awarded to employees who agree to have abortions. Though, in any case, the EEOC is using medical leave in this instance to example any medical condition. Ultimately, the company can't provide benefits calibrated to an employee's medical conditions.
The onus of the law was so that companies couldn't fire, demote, fail to award bonuses, or refuse to promote women who were pregnant. So a company can't say "women who get pregnant are ineligible for promotion to vice-president or higher." By offering free travel to women conditioned on their agreement not to remain pregnant, the company is engaging in a discriminatory employment action against those who remain pregnant; "women who remain pregnant are ineligible for free trips to California and Hawaii."