A Tennessee trucking firm hired a woman driver who said she could lift and transport the weight required for unloading a truck. Three months later, however, she learned she was pregnant, and her doctor ordered that she do no heavy lifting. She asked for a "light duty" assignment during the pregnancy, but the company refused. Was that legal?

What happened. Amanda Reeves told Swift Transportation that she could manage up to 200 pounds that might need to be offloaded when she was hired in early August of 2002. She began working as a driver for Swift, but in November, she learned she was pregnant. Both her family doctor and her obstetrician wrote to Swift on Reeves's behalf, requesting that she be given light duty and required to lift no more than 20 pounds.

Swift repeatedly stated that its light duty positions were reserved for workers injured on the job and that nothing was available for Reeves. Later that month, she was fired. She sued the company, arguing that its policy was in itself a violation of the federal Pregnancy Discrimination Act. A judge in federal district court ruled that neither the policy nor Swift's application of it had any discriminatory intent. He dismissed her charge, and she appealed to the 6th Circuit, which covers Kentucky, Ohio, Michigan, and Tennessee.

What the court said. Reeves could show no evidence that the company or any of its employees made disparaging comments or wanted her off the job because she was pregnant. And, a man recovering from surgery necessitated by anything other than an on-the-job injury would not have been eligible for light duty either. So, reasoning that the policy was neutral and that Reeves was actually seeking preferential rather than equal treatment, appellate judges agreed with the lower court and rejected her case.

It appears that the only other circuits to consider this issue have been the 5th (Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas), and the 11th (Alabama, Florida, Georgia), both of which ruled the same way as did the judges here. Reeves v. Swift Transportation Co., U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, No. 05-5271 (5/16/06).

Point to remember: Reeves didn't work for Swift long enough to qualify for FMLA time off. Her suit might have fared better had she charged that the policy had a disparate impact on women rather than that it was directly discriminatory. That argument succeeded for a group of female New York police officers, who showed that before their department in 2000 restricted light duty assignments to on-the-job injuries, women had used the majority of such assignments during their pregnancies.