Law Commons^™

Miscarriage Of Justice: Early Pregnancy Loss And The Limits Of U.S. Employment Law, Laura T. Kessler

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

This Article explores judicial responses to miscarriage under federal employment law in the United States. Miscarriage is an incredibly common experience. Of confirmed pregnancies, about fifteen percent will end in miscarriage; almost half of all women who have given birth have suffered a miscarriage. Yet this experience slips through the cracks of every major federal employment law in the United States.

The Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978, for example, defines sex discrimination to include discrimination on the basis of pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions. The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 requires covered employers to provide employees with …

Employment Discrimination And The Domino Effect, Laura T. Kessler

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

Employment discrimination is a multidimensional problem. In many instances, some combination of employer bias, the organization of work, and employees’ responses to these conditions, leads to worker inequality. Title VII does not sufficiently account for these dynamics in two significant respects. First, Title VII’s major proof structures divide employment discrimination into discrete categories, for example, disparate treatment, disparate impact, and sexual harassment. This compartmentalization does not account for the fact that protected employees often concurrently experience more than one form of discriminatory exclusion. The various types of exclusion often add up to significant inequalities, even though seemingly insignificant when considered …