Real Story of Pregnancy Discrimination

Anita Kay Hargett was first employed by Delta Automotive in 1983 as a telephone salesperson. She was considered by Delta to be a valuable and successful salesperson until she became pregnant in 1988 while unwed. Prior to pre-trial, Delta's only attempt to justify Ms. Hargett's dismissal was its assertions that she had a poor attitude, that she slept on the job, that her sales declined despite verbal warnings, and that she was warned in writing by the sales manager, C.R. Taylor, that she must produce $31,000 in August sales or be terminated. She was terminated on August 30, 1988 after her August sales amounted to only $28,114.04. The written "termination report" under "reason for separation" said nothing more than "quality of work causing drop in sales."

It was not until the trial began that Delta first claimed that Ms. Hargett was terminated because she had violated an unwritten company rule against unladylike conduct resulting in a customer loss. When defending Ms. Hargett's charge before the EEOC, Delta had never mentioned or even suggested this charge. Delta never informed the EEOC that Ms. Hargett had had an affair with a customer who, after Ms. Hargett became pregnant by him, discontinued doing business with Delta.

The court stated that it could not determine all of the factors which motivated Delta to fire Ms. Hargett or which of those factors predominated the decision to fire her. It did find, however, that the alleged legitimate, non-pregnancy reasons for the termination, as articulated by Delta, could not protect Delta from the fact that her pregnancy was related to the decision to fire her. The court then decided that Ms. Hargett's pregnancy constituted a part of the motivation for the decision to fire her, and thus she was awarded damages for her pregnancy discrimination claim.

Hargett v. Delta Automotive, Inc., 765 F. Supp. 1487 (N.D.Ala. 1991).