"Not a Viable Choice"

John Gallagher was the Suffolk County Police Commissioner when the Police Department implemented its pregnancy penalty. When he took the stand this morning Cassy got straight to the point: she asked him whether any female officers had been included or had been present at any of the meetings in which the new policy was made. Chief Gallagher replied that the meetings “were held with officers of a rank in which there were no female officers.” … Right.

Then Officer Christine Blauvelt took on the defense’s assertion that working the desk involves nothing more than pushing paper. She and retired Lt. Bellittieri described the parts of precinct desk work that can’t possibly be “civilianized,” from handling walk-ins to fingerprinting prisoners and civilians to and searching prisoners. Plaintiff Officer Sandi Lochren came to the stand next and told the story of how she’d reacted when her supervisor had informed her, when she was three months pregnant, that she must either go back to her patrol car or go home sick. “It wasn’t a viable choice,” Officer Lochren told the jury. “I felt I had to choose between my career and the safety of my pregnancy.”

The testimony also began to show that the application of the policy was far from “neutral.” Lt. Bellittieri testified that a male officer had been allowed to work light duty for over two years after having his gun and badge taken away for an incident that occurred off-duty. So much for an across-the-board on-duty-injuries-only policy.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post is reporting today that Verizon will pay out almost $49 million to 12,326 current and former female employees who brought a landmark class-action lawsuit that established that Verizon had engaged in pregnancy discrimination. Of course, that case is very different from ours — but we’re hoping that this month goes down in history as the one in which both phone companies and police departments learned that they could no longer engage in pregnancy discrimination.