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Article: Employment law - Title VII - Eighth Circuit holds that benefits plans excluding all contraceptives do not discriminate based on sex: In re Union Pacific Railroad Employment Practices Litigation.
- Article from:
- Harvard Law Review
- Article date:
- March 1, 2008
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2008 Harvard Law Review Association. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (1) forbids employers from discriminating in providing employment opportunities and benefits for male and female employees. (2) Since men and women have different health care needs, however, courts have had to grapple with whether identical treatment is necessarily nondiscriminatory. Recently, in In re Union Pacific Railroad Employment Practices Litigation, (3) the Eighth Circuit held that employer-based insurance plans' blanket exclusion of coverage for contraceptives does not discriminate on the basis of sex. (4) By failing to compare the extent to which the insurance plans met men's and women's sex-specific health needs, the ...