ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, April 25, 1996 TAG: 9604250058
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
When a woman who says she was fired from a Roanoke Valley company because she was pregnant takes her case to the Virginia Supreme Court, she will have the state attorney general on her side.
In a friend-of-the-court brief filed on behalf of Lisa Bailey, Attorney General Jim Gilmore asked the high court to rule that a Roanoke judge was wrong when he dismissed Bailey's sex discrimination lawsuit.
Bailey had filed suit last year against Scott-Gallaher Inc., claiming that the Cloverdale company fired her when she became pregnant because "her place was at home with the child."
In a decision in December, Circuit Judge Clifford Weckstein granted a motion by the company to dismiss the lawsuit, ruling essentially that Virginia's sex discrimination law does not apply to someone who's pregnant.
Although the Supreme Court has not decided whether to hear Bailey's appeal, an 11-page brief from Gilmore's office urges the high court to address what it called "important issues that will continue to arise in the trial courts of Virginia."
"I feel strongly that the women of Virginia should be able to hold a job and raise a family without their employer forcing them to choose between these two important aspects of their lives," Gilmore said Wednesday.
"This type of discrimination is wrong and I believe the trial court made a mistake in ruling that it is legal."
Terry Grimes, a Roanoke lawyer who represents Bailey, said it was "very unusual" for the state attorney general to become involved in a civil case such as this one.
Bailey, who worked as a sales coordinator for Scott-Gallaher, a small company that rents construction equipment, claimed in her suit that she was fired in 1994 after becoming pregnant and missing work on the advice of her doctor.
When she inquired about returning to work, Bailey was told by company president Ron Scott that she had been let go "because she was no longer dependable since she had delivered a child," the suit alleged.
Scott also said that Bailey's "place was at home with her child, that babies get sick sometimes and Bailey would have to miss work to care for the child," the suit claimed.
In dismissing Bailey's suit, Weckstein began his written decision by noting that Virginia is an at-will employment state, meaning that employers and employees can sever their relationships at any time without having to state a reason.
The state's Human Rights Act makes several exceptions that bar termination on the grounds of sex, race, religion or national origin. However, Weckstein ruled that state law does not specifically define sexual discrimination as applying to issues of pregnancy or childbirth.
The judge noted a case decided in 1974 by the U.S. Supreme Court, holding that female employees of General Electric Co. in Salem could not sue for discrimination over a company policy that excluded pregnancy and childbirth from its benefits package.
But Gilmore's brief notes that Congress overruled that decision with the passage of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, and that while the broadened definition of sexual discrimination to include pregnancy "is not expressly written into Virginia law, it is included implicitly."
Most sex discrimination cases are handled in federal court. Because of the lack of state precedent, the pregnancy issue has created confusion recently in state courts across Virginia. About the same time Weckstein dismissed Bailey's suit, a judge in Newport News ruled the opposite way in a nearly identical case.
If pregnancy discrimination is not considered a form of sexual discrimination, the attorney general argued, then working women would have to make a choice between having families or keeping their jobs.
"No man is ever put to such a choice," the brief states, "and no woman should be."
LENGTH: Medium: 74 linesby CNB