By Allie Carter, Director of Advocacy

Peggy Young’s request wasn’t outrageous.

The Maryland woman delivered packages for UPS. When she became pregnant, her doctor recommended that she avoid lifting more than 20 pounds.   Her deliveries were mostly letters and small packages, and another driver with the same route had already offered to deliver any heavy packages.

Since her employer had a history of making accommodations for other workers who needed them Ms. Young didn’t expect it to be a hassle. She was wrong.
UPS rejected her request because pregnancy was not an on-the-job injury the company was willing to accommodate.

Instead, Young was put on unpaid leave – unwelcome news to a woman preparing for the expenses that come with having a baby.  What she expected to be a simple, short-term accommodation  thus found its way to the Supreme Court this week, shedding a national spotlight on the importance of reasonable accommodations for pregnant workers.

This issue goes much further than Young and her employer.  Here in Illinois, the ACLU is fighting against pregnancy discrimination.  

Last summer, we stood proudly at Governor Pat Quinn's side while he signed legislation in Illinois requiring employers to provide reasonable accommodations for women who are pregnant. These accommodations are often modest requests like  carrying a bottle of water or sitting on a stool instead of standing for a full shift.   We know that all too often, employers discriminate against pregnant women by denying these reasonable requests and forcing them to choose between their jobs and a health pregnancy.

Quinniya Hearn, for example, was a mental health counselor at Chicago’s Roseland Community Hospital.  She asked Roseland to accommodate her high-risk pregnancy by temporarily excusing her from restraining disorderly and combative patients.  The hospital was unwilling to do so and ultimately fired Hearn, even though, as Hearn alleges,  it granted the same accommodation to a  male security guard with an injury.  Pregnant women who can continue to work with just a reasonable accommodation should not be pushed out of their jobs. They shouldn’t have to put their safety or the health of their pregnancy at risk in order to continue to support their families.

Peggy Young didn’t ask for anything outrageous. It’s outrageous that she had to choose between her job and a healthy pregnancy.

If you have experienced pregnancy discrimination in the workplace, we want to hear about it. Share your story.
 

The Chicago Tribune is currently running (beginning December 3 and 4, 2014) a series of front-page stories exploring the cruelty and neglect children experience in some of the residential treatment centers in Illinois. Many of the children featured in the stories are placed in these residential treatment centers under a contract with the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services.

The troubling and graphic details in the Tribune stories appear to have come as a surprise to the leadership at DCFS. The situation is not, however, a surprise to the ACLU of Illinois. We repeatedly have warned DCFS about the problems in these private residential treatment centers as part of our decades-long litigation designed to reform DCFS.

These facilities need persistent and independent oversight to make sure they provide safe conditions and adequate services to wards of the state. More fundamentally, as the ACLU long has advocated, Illinois must develop and fund a comprehensive, accessible community-based mental health care system, a system that identifies what a child needs, and then provides those services to the child in a home-based and community environment. The ACLU of Illinois is committed to making this community-based system a reality.

The sad Tribune series also points out the need for consistent, competent leadership for DCFS. Over the past 10 years, the Department has been a revolving door of Directors who have come and gone; some have even undone significant reforms that had been put in place to make life better for children in DCFS care.

The ACLU is calling on Governor-elect Rauner to prioritize the identification and recruitment of consistent, competent leadership for DCFS, leadership that will be a partner in creating the sort of community-based programs that will ensure that no child has to endure the nightmare situations described in the Tribune.

Read the Chicago Tribune series "Harsh Treatment."