| Geduldig v. Aiello | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Argued March 26, 1974 Decided June 17, 1974 | |
| Full case name | Geduldig v. Aiello et al. |
| Citations | 417U.S.484 (more) 94 S.Ct 2485; 41L. Ed. 256; 1974U.S. LEXIS 23 |
| Case history | |
| Prior | Judgment for plaintiffs,Aiello v. Hansen, 359F. Supp.792 (N.D. Cal. 1973); motion for reconsideration denied, 1973WL 11541 (N.D. Cal., August 3, 1973); stay granted,Hansen v. Aiello,414U.S. 897 (1973); probable jurisdiction noted,Geduldig v. Aiello,414U.S. 1110 (1973). |
| Holding | |
| Denial of benefits for work loss resulting from normal pregnancy does not violate theEqual Protection Clause of theFourteenth Amendment. | |
| Court membership | |
| |
| Case opinions | |
| Majority | Stewart, joined by Burger, White, Blackmun, Powell, Rehnquist |
| Dissent | Brennan, joined by Douglas, Marshall |
Geduldig v. Aiello, 417 U.S. 484 (1974), was anequal protection case in theUnited States in which theSupreme Court of the United States held that discrimination on the basis of pregnancy was not sex-based discrimination, and therefore the denial ofinsurance benefits for work loss resulting from a normalpregnancy did not violate theFourteenth Amendment.
TheCalifornia insurance program at issue did not exclude workers from eligibility based on sex but excluded pregnancy from a list of compensabledisabilities. The majority found that even though only women would be directly affected by the administrative decision, the classification of normal pregnancy as non-compensable was not a sex-based classification and so the court would defer to the state so long as it could provide arational basis for its categorization.
Geduldig and its follow-up case,General Electric Co. v. Gilbert (1976), were rejected by Congress and the public. They were considered anomalous, untilGeduldig was cited byDobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization (2022) andUnited States v. Skrmetti (2025).
From 1946, California ran an insurance system to cover private sector employees if temporarily unemployed because of a disability not covered byworkmen's compensation. It was funded by contributions deducted from the wages of participating employees, for whom participation was generally mandatory unless they belonged to an approved private insurance plan. Employees who had contributed 1% of a minimum income to the disability fund for one year prior to a period of disability were eligible to receive benefits. However, certain disabilities would not be covered, including those resulting fromcommitment fordipsomania,drug addiction, orsexualpsychopathy.[1] InGeduldig, theappellees challenged the further exclusion of certain disabilities resulting from pregnancy, as found in §2626 of the Unemployment Insurance Code: “In no case shall the term ‘disability’ or ‘disabled’ include any injury or illness caused by or arising in connection with pregnancy up to the termination of such pregnancy and for a period of 28 days thereafter.”
The litigation began as two separateclass action suits brought by employees who had paid into the state’s disability fund but who had been denied benefits relating to pregnancy-related disabilities. Three of the employees suffered employment disability after complications that arose during their pregnancies, while the fourth experienced a normal pregnancy which still led to a temporary inability to work. Carolyn Aiello brought suit inFederal District Court, while Augustina Armendariz, Elizabeth Johnson, and Jacqueline Jaramillo brought suit as a petition for awrit of mandate in thestate’s supreme court. The separate cases were consolidated when the state suit wasremoved to federal court by theappellant, Dwight Geduldig, Director of the California Department of Human Resources Development.
Initially, the appellees sought toenjoin enforcement of the exclusionary policy, and the District Court, as a divided three-judge panel, granted theirmotion forsummary judgment, holding that the program’s administration violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause and stating that “the exclusion of pregnancy-related disabilities is not based upon a classification having a rational and substantial relationship to a legitimate state purpose.” The court further denied a motion to stay its judgment pendingappeal. The appellant proceeded to file a similar motion with the Supreme Court, which noted probable jurisdiction of the appeal.
Although three of the appellees brought suit to recover benefits for loss of work after complications from pregnancy (tubal and ectopic pregnancies and amiscarriage), this issue wasmoot by the time the case reached the Supreme Court due to a decision in another case. InRentzer v. California Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board, the state court interpreted the statute as applying only to benefit payments for disabilities resulting from normal pregnancies, thus allowing a woman who had suffered anectopic pregnancy to recover benefits.[2] Therefore, the only remaining live controversy inGeduldig was whether appellee Jaramillo and others similarly situated were entitled to benefits for work loss related to normal and generally healthy pregnancy andchildbirth.
Part II of the majority opinion first laid out therational basis for the policy as argued by the state. Justice Stewart focused largely on theeconomics of the benefit system, which had been operating as a self-supporting system since its inception. The contribution rate to the disability fund as set struck a balance that allowed the state to cover the health conditions that it had deemed eligible under the program: in the years immediately precedingGeduldig, 90-103% of the disability fund's revenue had been utilized to pay disability andhospital benefits. Both parties acknowledged that to cover more disability risks would require an increase in the amount of money going into the fund, although they disagreed on the amount this would entail.[3] The District Court accepted the state's estimate that to cover normal pregnancy and delivery would require the fund to pay out over $100 million more in benefits but found that this would not destroy thesolvency of the program, although it would require “reasonable changes in the contribution rate, the maximum benefits allowable, and other variables.”[4] The state, however, argued that such changes would jeopardize the ability oflow-income Californians to participate in the program, and thus it had a rational basis to maintain the system in its existing state.
The majority pointed toWilliamson v. Lee Optical, in which the Court found that a legislature could legitimately address problems inphases, prioritizing issues which were most pressing. TheGeduldig majority stated that it would be particularly hesitant to second-guess such prioritization and legislative calculation in regards tosocial welfare programs, citing the premise inDandridge v. Williams that the Equal Protection Clause “does not require that a State must choose between attacking every aspect of a problem or not attacking the problem at all.”[5] California, the majority held, could legitimately and constitutionally decide that it was better to “keep benefit payments at an adequate level for disabilities that are covered, rather than to cover all disabilities inadequately.”
Finally, Stewart's opinion turned to the issue of whether California's rational basis for its policy was sufficient to uphold the state's position. The majority found in the insurance system no invidious discrimination that would violate the Equal Protection Clause, pointing out that women as a group were still eligible for benefits even though the particular condition of pregnancy might not be covered. The Court reasoned that there was “no risk from which men are protected and women are not,” and “no risk from which women are protected and men are not.” As stated in Footnote 20 of the majority opinion,
The program divides potential recipients into two groups-pregnant women and nonpregnant persons. While the first group is exclusively female, the second includes members of both sexes. The fiscal and actuarial benefits of the program thus accrue to members of both sexes.
While the Court acknowledged that only women could undergo the excluded condition, “it does not follow that every legislative classification concerning pregnancy is a sex-based classification.” Pregnancy was an objectively identifiable characteristic rather than a subjective judgment, and the appellants had made no showing that the state's asserted rationale for the policy was a pretext for invidious discrimination. Thus, California's policy was not one which the Court would subject to theheightened scrutiny that it had used to evaluate cases such asReed v. Reed andFrontiero v. Richardson, and therefore the rational basis presented by the state was enough to allow the policy to stand.
The majority reversed the lower court's decision and vacated the stay previously granted.
Justice Brennan, joined by Justices Douglas and Marshall, dissented from the majority's opinion, arguing that underReed andFrontiero, intermediate scrutiny was the proper level of review for the issue, and that under this analysis California's classification failed, as the appellants had only set out a rational basis for the state's policy. The dissenters acknowledged that the fiscal solvency of California's insurance program was a legitimate concern and that to include temporary disabilities resulting from normal pregnancy in the scope of conditions covered by the system would require an increase in the employee contribution, an increase in the yearly contribution ceiling, or state subsidization. However,
whatever role such monetary considerations may play in traditional equal protection analysis, the State’s interest in preserving the fiscal integrity of its disability insurance program simply cannot render the State’s use of a suspect classification constitutional.
The dissenters pointed out that pregnancy was one of the only common conditions affecting health that was not covered by the broad scope of California's Unemployment Insurance Code, even though the economic results of it might be functionally identical to those of other disabilities, in that wages might be lost due to temporary physical inability to work, and even in healthy individuals, pregnancy, delivery, and post-partum care are costly.
Brennan and the other dissenters viewed the state's policy as “singling out for less favorable treatment a gender-linked disability peculiar to women,” creating a “double standard.” They interpreted the policy as one in which
a limitation is imposed upon the disabilities for which women workers may recover, while men receive full compensation for all disabilities suffered. ...In effect, one set of rules is applied to females and another to males. Such dissimilar treatment of men and women, on the basis of physical characteristics inextricably linked to one sex, inevitably constitutes sex discrimination.
The dissenters expressed dissatisfaction with the majority's explanation for its refusal to apply a higher standard of review in a case involving issues tied to sex. Brennan, Douglas and Marshall viewed Stewart's opinion as a retreat from recent equal protection decisions and voiced concern that the majority's decision would relegate sex-based classifications to the same “traditional” analysis that had allowed legislation such as that inMuller v. Oregon.
After the ruling, lower district and appeals courts limited the scope of the ruling by only applying it to cases brought under the Equal Protection Clause, and notTitle VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.[6] The Supreme Court closed that avenue two years later inGeneral Electric Co. v. Gilbert, which extendedGeduldig to Title VII. Congress overruledGilbert by passing thePregnancy Discrimination Act, however it did not overruleGeduldig, which still applied to all non-Title VII cases.[6]
Constitutional scholars consideredGeduldig to be "an anomaly and outdated" because it was immediately rejected by Congress and the public.[6][7] Other law professors argued that it was effectively overruled byUnited States v. Virginia (1996) andNevada Department of Human Resources v. Hibbs (2003).[8] In her dissent inColeman v. Maryland Court of Appeals (2012), JusticeRuth Bader Ginsburg said it should be overruled.[7]
However,Geduldig was cited inDobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization (2022) to justify that abortion restrictions were not sex discrimination and therefore abortion rights could not be found in the Equal Protection Clause.[9][7]
It was cited again by the majority inUnited States v. Skrmetti (2025), which held that a state law that prevented minors from using puberty blockers to treat gender dysphoria.[7] In her dissent, JusticeSonia Sotomayor describedGeduldig as "egregiously wrong" when it was originally decided.[10]University of Michigan law professorLeah Litman comparedSkrmetti's usage ofGeduldig as equivalent to relying onPlessy and Korematsu.[7]