The recently decided Supreme Court case of Young v. UPS involved a “disparate treatment” claim brought by a pregnant employee pursuant to the Pregnancy Discrimination Act.  Young, the employee, claimed that UPS, her employer, acted unlawfully in refusing to accommodate her pregnancy-related lifting restriction.   Generally, a “disparate-treatment” claim alleges that an employer intentionally treated a complainant less favorably than employees with the complainant’s qualifications but outside the complainant’s protected class.  A plaintiff can prove disparate treatment either (1) by direct evidence that a workplace policy, practice, or decision relies expressly on a protected characteristic, or (2) by using the burden shifting framework set forth in the McDonnell Douglas case, explained below. Liability in a disparate-treatment case depends on whether the protected trait actually motivated the employer’s decision.  However, an employer may implement policies that are not intended to harm members of a protected class, even if their implementation sometimes harms those members, as long as the employer has a legitimate, nondiscriminatory, nonpretextual reason for doing so. The Supreme Court, in Young v. UPS, held that an individual pregnant worker who seeks to show disparate treatment through indirect evidence may do so through application of the McDonnell Douglas framework. That framework requires a plaintiff to make out a prima facie case of discrimination by showing actions taken by the employer from which one can infer, if such actions remain unexplained, that it is more likely than not that such actions were based on a discriminatory criterion illegal under Title VII.  The burden of making this showing is not as onerous as succeeding on an ultimate finding of fact as to a discriminatory employment action.  Neither does it require the plaintiff to show that those whom the employer favored and those whom the employer disfavored were similar in all but the protected ways. Thus, the Court held, a plaintiff alleging that the denial of an accommodation constituted disparate treatment under the Pregnancy Discrimination Act may make out a prima facie case by showing, as in McDonnell Douglas, that she belongs to the protected class, that she sought accommodation, that the employer did not accommodate her, and that the employer did accommodate others similar in their ability or inability to work. The employer may then seek to justify its refusal to accommodate the plaintiff by relying on legitimate, nondiscriminatory reasons for denying her accommodation.  But, consistent with the Act’s basic objective, that reason normally cannot consist simply of a claim that it is more expensive or less convenient to add pregnant women to the category of those (“similar in their ability or inability to work”) whom the employer accommodates. If the employer offers an apparently “legitimate, nondiscriminatory” reason for its actions, the plaintiff may in turn show that the employer’s proffered reasons are in fact pretextual. The Court ruled that the plaintiff may reach a jury on this issue by providing sufficient evidence that the employer’s policies impose a significant burden on pregnant workers, and that the employer’s “legitimate, nondiscriminatory” reasons are not sufficiently strong to justify the burden, but rather—when considered along with the burden imposed—give rise to an inference of intentional discrimination. The plaintiff can create a genuine issue of material fact as to whether a significant burden exists by providing evidence that the employer accommodates a large percentage of nonpregnant workers while failing to accommodate a large percentage of pregnant workers. This approach, though limited to the Pregnancy Discrimination Act context, is consistent with the Court’s longstanding rule that a plaintiff can use circumstantial proof to rebut an employer’s apparently legitimate, nondiscriminatory reasons for treating individuals within a protected class differently than those outside the protected class. The Court held that the Pregnancy Discrimination Act requires courts to consider the extent to which an employer’s policy treats pregnant workers less favorably than it treats nonpregnant workers similar in their ability or inability to work. And—as in all cases in which an individual plaintiff seeks to show disparate treatment through indirect evidence—it requires courts to consider any legitimate, nondiscriminatory, nonpretextual justification for these differences in treatment. The Court noted that statutory changes made after the time of Young’s pregnancy may limit the future significance of its interpretation of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act. In 2008, Congress expanded the definition of “disability” under the ADA to make clear that “physical or mental impairment[s] that substantially limi[t]” an individual’s ability to lift, stand, or bend are ADA-covered disabilities. As interpreted by the EEOC, the new statutory definition requires employers to accommodate employees whose temporary lifting restrictions originate off the job, such as pregnancy. The Supreme Court “expressed no views on these statutory and regulatory changes.”