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Assisted Reproductive Technologies: Failure to Cover Does Not Violate ADA, Title VII, or PDA

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

Valerie Gutmann
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Extract

In Saks v. Franklin Covey Co., the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held that the American with Disabilities Act (ADA), Title VII of Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA), and New York state law do not proscribe an employer's self-insured employee health plan from excluding surgical impregnation procedures from its coverage. Although the court found that infertility qualifies as a disability under the ADA, it restricted required coverage of certain infedty treatments.

Title I of the ADA prohibits an employer from discriminating on the basis of disability “in regard to … fringe benefits available by virtue of employment, whether or not administered by the covered entity.” The ADA defines “disability” as “a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities.” In Bragdon v. Abbott, the U.S. Supreme Court found that reproduction was a major life activity under the ADA.

Type
Article
Information
Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , Volume 31 , Issue 2 , Summer 2003 , pp. 314 - 316
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 2003

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References

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