Linda Greenhouse Delivers 2015 Bodenheimer Lecture on Family Law

Linda Greenhouse, the Senior Research Scholar in Law, Knight Distinguished Journalist in Residence, and Joseph Goldstein Lecturer in Law at Yale Law School, delivered the 2015 Brigitte M. Bodenheimer Lecture on Family Law in the Kalmanovitz Appellate Courtroom on March 18. Speaking to an audience that included an impressive turnout of King Hall faculty members, Greenhouse discussed the U.S. Supreme Court's history with regard to pregnancy and gender discrimination in a presentation entitled "Pregnant Teachers and Unintended Offspring."

Greenhouse, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who covered the Supreme Court for the New York Times from 1978 to 2008, began by mentioning her previous visit to King Hall, when she spoke at a 2009 UC Davis Law Review symposium on the jurisprudence of U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens.  She said that the substance of her Bodenheimer lecture was drawn largely from research done as part of her work on an as-yet-unpublished book on the Burger Court, which led her to examine in detail the sex equality jurisprudence of the Supreme Court during the 1970s, including cases involving pregnant women in the workforce.

"I think the reason it's germane to resurrect some of that history in March 2015 is that the Supreme Court is still trying to figure that out, as indeed American society is," Greenhouse said, referring to Young v. United Parcel Service, a case involving the Pregnancy Discrimination Act that was pending before the Court at the time of Greenhouse's lecture. (On March 25, the Court decided the case, ruling in favor of the plaintiff, who sued her employer for putting her on unpaid leave while pregnant.)

Greenhouse talked at length about Cleveland Board of Education v. LaFleur, a 1974 case involving mandatory pregnancy leave requirements for Ohio schoolteachers that "serves as a useful frame for the complex narrative of how the Supreme Court first began to build a jurisprudence of sex equality." Drawing upon her extensive research, Greenhouse described how the Justices struggled with LaFleur and ultimately did not see it as an Equal Protection Clause case, instead dismissing the mandatory leave requirements as arbitrary and irrational. Greenhouse went on to note that in other significant cases, such as Roe v. Wade, Reed v. Reed, and Frontiero v. Richardson, the Justices seemed to reflect changing societal attitudes about gender equality, yet still ruled in Geduldig v. Aiello that unfavorable treatment of pregnant women did not amount to sex discrimination.

"Try as they might, and most of them did try, the Justices couldn't figure out how to make the most essential difference between men and women, women's ability to conceive and bear a child, fit within the court's maturing sex equality jurisprudence," Greenhouse said.

Issues regarding the treatment of pregnant women in the workplace remain controversial, Greenhouse said, illustrating her point by reading several reader comments submitted following publication of her recent New York Times column on the Young case.

Established in 1981 in memory of Professor Brigitte M. Bodenheimer, the Bodenheimer Lecture brings renowned scholars and practitioners to King Hall to discuss recent developments in family law. Faculty in attendance for the 2015 lecture included Associate Deans Vikram Amar and Hollis Kulwin as well as Professors Alan Brownstein, Floyd Feeney, Richard Frank, John Hunt, Lisa Ikemoto, Thomas Joo, Courtney Joslin, Rex Perschbacher, Lisa Pruitt, Leticia Saucedo, Brian Soucek, Rose Cuison Villazor, and Martha West.