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UAAAIWA v. Johnson Controls Inc.: Fighting for Women’s Rights in the Workplace

UAAAIWA v. Johnson Controls Inc. Fighting for Women’s Rights in the Workplace argued october 10, 1990 steve lash Johnson Controls Inc. manufactures batteries whose assembly process entails exposure to high levels of lead. After discovering that eight of its female employees had become pregnant while maintaining blood lead levels in excess of those thought safe by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), Johnson barred all its female employees except those with medically documented infertility from engaging in tasks that require exposure to lead in excess of recommended OSHA levels. Following the implementation of Johnson’s fetal-protection policy , the United Automobile Workers (UAW) challenged it as sexually discriminatory, in violation of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. When the appellate court af‹rmed a district court decision in favor of Johnson, the UAW appealed, and the Supreme Court granted certiorari.| 158 To listen to passages from oral arguments indicated with , visit www.goodquarrel.com. ;)) rarest at the supreme court is the oral argument in which the attorneys are at the top of their game, most of the justices are thoroughly engaged, and the case presents an issue in which both sides can—and do—argue convincingly that not only the law but also sound public policy is on their side. Such was the case on the morning of October 10, 1990, when attorneys Marsha S. Berzon and Stanley S. Jaspan battled before the justices in United Automobile, Aerospace, and Agricultural Implement Workers of America v. Johnson Controls Inc. (1991),1 which concerned whether a maker of car batteries could exclude women of childbearing age from working in areas that would expose them to lead, a central ingredient in batteries that is potentially harmful to fetuses. The policy was established when eight women in the plant became pregnant while maintaining blood lead levels that exceeded the safe level as established by OSHA. The policy barred all women, except for those who had documented proof of their inability to bear children, from any job that could result in exposure to lead. Berzon, representing a group of the excluded women, argued that the federal law banning gender discrimination on the job required companies to allow women to work wherever men were permitted, even at potential risk to the unborn. That law, Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, left to women, not their employers, the informed choice about whether to work in areas that could harm fetuses, she said. Speci‹cally, a group of women whose employment had been affected by the policy ‹led a class-action lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin. Berzon’s argument adroitly not only focused on the text of the statute but addressed the law’s goal of ending paternalistic company policies that ostensibly were designed to protect women but that in fact prevented them from climbing the corporate ladder. Berzon’s skillful melding of statutory interpretation and public policy strengthened both elements of her argument. Fighting for Women’s Rights in the Workplace | 159 1. 499 U.S. 187. The fetal-risk policies of this kind . . . if upheld, would keep women from a broad range of jobs because there are, in fact, a broad range of jobs that present potential fetal risks due to toxics but also due to disease, stress, noise, radiation and also to ordinary physical accidents, like car accidents, falls, etc. . . . The net effect of upholding a policy of this type, therefore, would be to sanction the resegregation of the workforce, particularly because the economics of the situation are that employers are going to instill fetal-protection policies in instances in which they are not dependent on women workers for their workforce and not instigate them where they are highly dependent on women workers, because then they would have nobody to do the job. Jaspan, pressing the battery maker’s case, countered that companies have an overriding legal and moral duty to protect workers and their potential offspring from known hazards, even if that means excluding a speci‹c class of workers—in this case, women—from certain jobs. A company’s need to prevent toxic exposure that could likely cause birth defects trumps the argument that the civil rights law requires an employer to place fertile women in harm’s way, Jaspan said in an argument that also skillfully combined statutory interpretation and sound public policy. “We’re not...