Young V. Parcel Inc. Employment Case Brief Law Research Paper

Young V. Parcel Inc. Employment Case Brief
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation
Young Vs. Parcel Inc. Employment Case Brief
Facts
The case, Young V. Parcel, Inc. centers on a dispute between Young (Petitioner) and Parcel, Inc. (Respondent). The petitioner was a driver for United Parcel Services (USP). She was pregnant, and her doctor advised her against lifting weights that were more than 20 pounds, yet USP required its drivers to have the ability to raise more than 70 pounds of loads. USP, as a respondent, informed the petitioner, Young that she was not supposed to implement tasks as typically owing to lifting restrictions occasioned by pregnancy under her doctor’s advice.
She was sent on leave resulting in loss of benefits, including pay and medical cover due to weight lifting restrictions. Due to this, Young filed a federal lawsuit accusing UPS of unlawfully failing to accommodate her pregnancy-occasioned restriction regarding load lifting. Her argument was anchored on discrimination that she was denied light duty accommodation that other USP employees routinely access with the same lifting restrictions.
Young accuses USP of a disparate-treatment claim of discrimination, indicating that other workers with work-related ‘shortcoming’ were protected by giving them lighter duties. However, UPS argued that Young did qualify to be categorized within the custody of the American Disability Act (ADA), on-the-job injury, or DOT class. While leveraging on the summary decision, UPS argued that Young failed to demonstrate that UPS's decision was based on her pregnancy or treated discriminatively and contrastingly from other workers experiencing similar scenarios in UPS. Thus, it had not discriminated against her based on pregnancy, but its decision was like any other treatment of ‘other’ persons. Although Young crafts a prima facie case of bias by the mere fact that she was treated differently from other co-employees who may have similar shortcomings in work as provided by Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA) and ADA, she failed to satisfy the court under McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green’s framework of proof of discrimination.
Issues
The case attempts to determine whether UPS's decision or action towards Young on the matter of pregnancy constitutes an act of intentional discrimination or not. The case attempts to prove whether intentional discrimination under the UPS policy and decisions on pregnant women.
Decision
Rule
The District Court provided summary judgment to USP, concluding, among other things, that Young was not able to create a prima facie case regarding discriminatory treatment under McDonnell Douglas. The court reasoned the comparators; including on-the-job injuries or ADA categories were incongruous to Young’s case. The court dismissed Young’s argument that she was entitled to similar accommodation accorded to other workers facing the same restrictions. Equally, the court rejected UPS’s counterargument, which leveraged on ‘pregnancy-blind’ practices. The Fourth Circuit provided various affirmations inter alia a pregnant employee who seeks to demonstrate disparate treatment by alluding to discriminatory evidence by applying McDonnell Douglas’s directions and supporting parties’ interpretations of the PDA.
Application
The Court’s decision in Young v. UPS demonstrates that certain situations exist where employers can develop accommodative actions for given categories of employees without similarly creating a favorable work environment for pregnant employees. Besides, the court’s decision implies creating a strict parameter that may eliminate employers’ ability to do just that. As contextualized in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the PDA forbids discrimination within the prism of pregnancy-related issues, gender and associated health disorders (Corbett, 2015). In the Young vs. UPS case, the PDA also mandates that employers manage all pregnant women in a similar approach to all employment-related aspects as other persons not so affected but show similarities in their capability or limitations to work. This provision guided the Supreme Court’s decision in the interpretation and understanding of Young v. UPS interprets in conjecture with McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green.
The PDA of 1978 confers twofold interpretations. First, it compels employers to provide rational accommodative adjustment for pregnant employees. Second, it fails to mandate employers to make a more favorable working environment for pregnant women. In Young v. United Parcel Service, Inc., the Supreme Court affirmed that workers could show intentional pregnancy bias by relying on an employer’s non-fulfilment to create accommodative adjustments for the pregnant working while creating particular working related actions and decisions for other workers with some form of limitations associated to capacity to work. Instead of utilizing the PDA of 1978, the court deployed McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green as a yardstick to evaluate indirect evidence of discrimination (Corbett, 2...