Reproduction - Reproductive Hazards In The Workplace

Legal disputes have arisen when employers have barred pregnant women and women of childbearing age from jobs that pose potential hazards to the fetus. The Supreme Court, in United Auto Workers v. Johnson Controls, 499 U.S. 187, 111 S. Ct. 1196, 113 L. Ed. 2d 158 (1991), ruled that a female employee cannot be excluded from jobs that expose her to health risks that may harm her fetus. The Court found that the exclusion of the women violated Title VII of the CIVIL RIGHTS ACT OF 1964 (42 U.S.C.A. § 2000e et seq.) because the company policy only applied to fertile women, not fertile men. Justice Blackmun, in his majority opinion, noted that the policy singled out women on the basis of gender and childbearing capacity rather than on the basis of fertility alone. Concerns about the health of a child born to a worker at the plant were to be left "to the parents who conceive, bear, support, and raise them [the children] rather than to the employers who hire those parents."