Dive Brief:
- A former Amazon warehouse worker can go ahead with her claim she was fired due to her pregnancy because the alleged events leading up to her termination were close enough in time to state a cause of action for discrimination under Title VII of the CIvil Rights Act of 1964, a federal district court in Illinois held Aug. 17 in Delitz v. Amazon.com Services LLC.
- According to the ruling, the worker alleged that after she informed Amazon she was pregnant, it reduced her overtime hours. Then, after she requested light duty to accommodate her pregnancy, Amazon allegedly eliminated her overtime entirely. She also alleged that while Amazon granted her request, it fired her 17 days later for supposedly “sitting down in a trailer” two months earlier. The worker denied the infraction and claimed she never received any written warnings. She sued Amazon for sex and pregnancy discrimination under Title VII.
- The decisive issue here — suspicious timing — is common in retaliation cases, such as where a protected activity is closely followed by an adverse action.
Dive Insight:
“Given the close connection between Ms. Delitz’s [pregnancy] disclosure, the restrictions imposed on [her] overtime, and her subsequent termination, Ms. Delitz has plausibly alleged at least one adverse employment action caused by her sex and pregnancy,” the court explained in refusing to dismiss the claim.
Amazon did not respond to a request for comment.
Along with other circumstantial evidence, suspicious timing can also be considered in determining whether a plaintiff alleged intentional discrimination, an Alabama federal court noted in an April ruling.
In that case, a physical therapist alleged she was fired for “bringing morale down” less than a week after telling the office manager she was transgender. She could move forward with her sex discrimination claim because, in addition to the suspicious timing, the justification for her termination was vague, subjective and had never been raised before, the court explained.
In the Amazon case, it was “reasonable to infer that the firing — for an isolated incident months earlier — [was] the culmination of a pattern of escalating adverse actions that began when [the worker] disclosed her pregnancy,” the Illinois federal court pointed out.
The worker also sued Amazon for violating the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act by failing to effectively accommodate her pregnancy. The court dismissed the claim. It said there was nothing to plausibly tie her allegations that she was increasingly scrutinized and unfairly terminated to the accommodation’s effectiveness.
Pregnancy-related lawsuits often involve the PWFA, which gives employees a broad right to reasonable accommodation for pregnancy-related conditions, absent undue hardship to the employer.
Last year, an Amazon worker in Florida with a life-threatening ectopic pregnancy sued the company for violating the PWFA, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Family and Medical Leave Act and Florida law. The worker alleged that Amazon denied her request for leave to undergo surgery and then fired her without engaging in any interactive process.
The parties resolved that case last summer, court documents show.