News Brief Summary

  • The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois ruled on August 17 that a former Amazon warehouse worker can continue her lawsuit alleging she was fired for being pregnant, reasoning that the sequence of events before her termination was close enough in time to establish a claim of discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The case isDelitz v. Amazon.com Services LLC。
  • According to the ruling, the worker claimed that after informing Amazon of her pregnancy, the company reduced her overtime hours. Subsequently, when she requested light-duty work to accommodate her pregnancy, Amazon allegedly eliminated her overtime altogether. She also claimed that despite Amazon approving her request, 17 days later, the company fired her for "sitting in a trailer" two months prior. The worker denied the violation and stated she never received any written warning. She sued Amazon for sex and pregnancy discrimination under Title VII.
  • The key issue in this case—suspicious timing—is common in retaliation cases, such as when an adverse action closely follows protected conduct.

In-Depth Analysis

"Given the close connection between Ms. Delitz's disclosure of her pregnancy, the restrictions imposed on her overtime, and her subsequent termination, Ms. Delitz has plausibly alleged at least one adverse employment action due to her sex and pregnancy," the court explained in refusing to dismiss the lawsuit.

Amazon did not respond to requests for comment.

In addition to other circumstantial evidence, suspicious timing can also be used to determine whether a plaintiff has alleged intentional discrimination, a federal court in Alabama noted in an April ruling. In that case, a physical therapist claimed that less than a week after informing her office manager that she was transgender, she was fired for "lowering morale." The court held that she could proceed with her sex discrimination lawsuit because, besides the suspicious timing, the reason for termination was vague, subjective, and had never been mentioned before.

In the Amazon case, "the reasonable inference is that the termination—targeting an isolated incident from months earlier—was the culmination of a series of escalating adverse actions that began with the worker's disclosure of her pregnancy," the Illinois federal court noted.

The worker also sued Amazon for violating the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act for failing to effectively provide pregnancy accommodations. The court dismissed this claim, stating there was no reasonable basis to connect her allegations—that she was subjected to increased scrutiny and unfair termination—with the effectiveness of the accommodations.

Pregnancy-related lawsuits often involve the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, which grants employees broad rights to reasonable accommodations for pregnancy-related conditions, unless doing so imposes an undue hardship on the employer.

Last year, a Florida Amazon worker with a life-threatening ectopic pregnancy sued the company for violations of the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Family and Medical Leave Act, and Florida state law. The worker claimed that Amazon denied her request for leave to undergo surgery and then fired her without engaging in any interactive process. Court documents show the parties settled the case last summer.