It Happened To Me:Pregnancy Discrimination

Joanna Laxton was a very successful retail manager. She had been promoted through the management ranks at a Wal-Mart store and had been promoted from assistant manager to general manager at a Stein Mart department store. In fact, she was working as general manager of a Stein Mart store when The Gap Corporation first approached her about working for them. The Gap wanted Ms. Laxton to open and manage a new Old Navy store. At first Ms. Laxton refused, but after The Gap's persistence and large salary offer, Ms. Laxton agreed. In a vote of confidence, two employees who worked with Ms. Laxton at Stein Mart followed her to The Gap.

On March 29, 1999, Ms. Laxton arrived at her first day of work with exciting news to share with her regional assistant manager. Ms. Laxton had learned after accepting The Gap's offer that she was pregnant. But her displeased manager said 'you realize this means that I have to pull other management out of other stores to cover your store, when basically, you know, this store should have been taken care of. What management do you think we're supposed to use?' After this exchange, Ms. Laxton was on the receiving end of her manager's "unusually unpleasant" attitude.

Ms. Laxton went on to do a stellar job running the Old Navy store she supervised, but received three warnings for policy violations. The store's revenues were strong and under her management, the store won a sales contest. Despite her success, however, Ms. Laxton was the target of several written warnings for store policy violations.

Ms. Laxton was able to provide sufficient explanation for all the alleged violations. She stopped leaving the back door open as soon as she was informed that to do so was against policy. When she learned that a job applicant had been a bank robber, she rejected the applicant. She countered criticism for asking employees to wear un-purchased store merchandise by pointing to a company directive to have employees wear un-purchased merchandise to increase sales.

Nevertheless, after five successful months of managing the store, Ms. Laxton was fired. On October 10, 2000, after exhausting the required steps at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Ms. Laxton sued The Gap for violations of Title VII's Pregnancy Discrimination Act in Federal Court. Just over a month later, a jury awarded Ms. Laxton $127,000 in back pay, $57,000 in front pay, $100,000 in mental anguish and $200,000 in punitive damages. The Gap appealed.

On June 6, 2003, almost three years after initiating her suit, Ms. Laxton finally won her case. The appeals court found Ms. Laxton had successfully challenged all The Gap's claimed reasons for firing her. She proved the alleged reasons -- the warnings mentioned above -- lacked substance. The court also concluded the manager's comments upon hearing news of the pregnancy demonstrated the manager's stereotypical presumptions about Ms. Laxton's job performance based on her pregnancy. The court said, "[d]iscriminatory animus can be inferred from [the manager's] willingness to assume the worst."

The appeals court held that Ms. Laxton had successfully proved her case of pregnancy discrimination and upheld the jury verdict.