A federal judge has ruled that an employer’s fertility plan did not discriminate, even though a lesbian employee had to pay for unsuccessful insemination before becoming eligible for treatment.
Employers in the US Eleventh Circuit have been handed a useful, if non-binding, decision on fertility benefits for same-sex couples after a Georgia federal court dismissed a lesbian nurse’s proposed class action against hospital operator Wellstar.
In his decision issued on 25 September, Judge Michael Brown of the US District Court for the Northern District of Georgia ruled on 25 September that Tara Kulwicki had not plausibly alleged sex or sexual-orientation discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The decision adopts a strict application of the Supreme Court’s reasoning in Bostock v Clayton County [2020], requiring the court to change only the claimant’s sex when testing whether a policy produces unlawful differential treatment.
Kulwicki had argued that Wellstar’s plan put lesbians at a disadvantage because, unlike heterosexual women, they could not establish infertility through unprotected heterosexual intercourse before receiving cover for fertility treatment. Judge Brown held that the relevant comparison was instead a hypothetical male Kulwicki seeking the same treatment for himself – not a male employee whose female spouse required treatment.
The ruling dismisses Kulwicki’s individual claims and the proposed class-action claims without prejudice. It...
Every couple of years, the same false stories come back. A claim that an election was rigged before a single vote was cast. An old video of violence, stripped of its date and place, presented as b...