I’m not sure you have a case if the percentage of women on maternity leave in the fired group is roughly the same as in the non-fired group.
If it isn’t illegal to fire people taking maternity leave specifically, which I don’t think it is in the US, you’re out of luck. The only illegal thing is firing people because of maternity leave. Since there was a mass layoff, it can easily be argued that the maternity leave was not the reason.
The US needs better labor laws, and thus unions. An individual can’t do anything against it.
The decision to lay the person off was made before the maternity leave was scheduled, in which case I’d argue she has a case for detrimental reliance, or
The decision to lay the person off was made after the maternity leave was scheduled, in which case a prima facie assumption is fair to make that the taking of leave obviously colored the supervisor’s evaluation and contributed to the layoff, and the burden is on the employer to prove otherwise.
In fact, there’s an argument to be made that they must terminate her, because Terminating everybody but those with scheduled maternity leave has a disparate impact on employees who are not pregnant.
I’m not sure you have a case if the percentage of women on maternity leave in the fired group is roughly the same as in the non-fired group.
If it isn’t illegal to fire people taking maternity leave specifically, which I don’t think it is in the US, you’re out of luck. The only illegal thing is firing people because of maternity leave. Since there was a mass layoff, it can easily be argued that the maternity leave was not the reason.
The US needs better labor laws, and thus unions. An individual can’t do anything against it.
There are two possibilities. Either:
The decision to lay the person off was made before the maternity leave was scheduled, in which case I’d argue she has a case for detrimental reliance, or
The decision to lay the person off was made after the maternity leave was scheduled, in which case a prima facie assumption is fair to make that the taking of leave obviously colored the supervisor’s evaluation and contributed to the layoff, and the burden is on the employer to prove otherwise.
Or option 3: manager made sure not to discriminate against non-maternity-leave people by not overly firing them compared to people on maternity leave.
If they only fired people not on maternity leave, they could sue about being discriminated against.
In fact, there’s an argument to be made that they must terminate her, because Terminating everybody but those with scheduled maternity leave has a disparate impact on employees who are not pregnant.