By Amanda Estes
Staff Writer
As a trial lawyer and a mother of two, State Rep. Cynthia Dill (D-Cape Elizabeth) recognizes the challenges of balancing a career with family responsibilities.
“It takes more to prove you’re a player if you have to stop a deposition at 5 [p.m.] to pick up children,” she said. “It’s one of those things if you’re a woman who has children and works, you deal with it. I’ve definitely felt at times that I’m treated differently because of family responsibilities.”
Dill submitted a bill to the Legislature that would prohibit employment discrimination based on parental status, marital status or familial responsibilities. Out of 566 bill requests voted on by the Legislature’s legislative council, Dill’s was one of roughly 150 approved for the 2008 session, which opens in January.  
“I don’t want this bill to be thought of as just good for employees and bad for employers,” Dill said. “We have so many great employers in Maine – who really want to do right by their employees.”
Maine’s anti-discrimination laws currently prohibit discrimination in employment based on race, color, sex, sexual orientation, physical or mental disability, religion, age, ancestry or national origin.
Maine Human Rights Commission Executive Director Patricia Ryan said the commission is interested in hearing the discussions that will follow Dill’s proposal. The commission investigates charges of unlawful discrimination in employment, housing, education, access to public accommodations, extension of credit and offensive names. Because parental status, marital status and familial responsibilities are not protected classes, the commission does not have the jurisdiction to investigate complaints in those areas.
Ryan said new protected classes are often the result of individuals coming forward and speaking out against unfair treatment.
Attorney David Webbert of the Augusta law firm, Johnson & Webbert, is currently representing a Sebago woman who brought a civil case against Anthem Health Plans of Maine after she claims she was denied a promotion because she is a mother of four children, including 6-year-old triplets and an 11-year-old.
Laurie Chadwick claims after nine years of strong performance, she was denied a promotion to a supervisory position last year and told she “had too much on her plate” including “her kids” and classes she was taking toward her bachelor’s degree. Her female superiors said if they were in her position, they would be “overwhelmed.”
Chadwick claims she was the victim of illegal sex discrimination because a “determinative factor in the decision was the gender stereotype that, because she is a woman, Ms. Chadwick would allow her obligations to her children and husband to adversely affect her work performance,” according to her complaint.
Anthem Spokesperson Mark Ishkanian said the company’s decision was based solely on the employees’ merits.
“We firmly believe she was not discriminated against,” he said. “In fact, the person who received the promotion was also a woman with dependent children.”
Webbert said the trial is scheduled to go to federal court early next year.
 “It’s a very hot area for employment law in general and it happens to men too,” he said. “If [men] want to stay home and take care of the kids, they get a lot of resistance because people think it’s the woman’s job.”
Denying a male employee leave to care for an infant when leave would be granted to a female employee is one example of discrimination referenced in the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s (EEOC) guidelines, released in May.
Although the EEOC federal statutes do not prohibit discrimination based solely on parental or other caregiver status – discrimination must be based on a protected class such as sex or race – the guidelines are meant to outline whether discrimination against working parents or people with caregiving responsibilities constitutes unlawful stereotyping. In addition to state and local laws providing broader protections, some people with parental or other caregiver status may also be protected under other federal laws, such as the Family and Medical Leave Act.
According to the guidelines, “lowering subjective evaluations of a female employee’s work performance after she becomes the primary caregiver of her grandchildren [and] reassigning a woman to less desirable projects based on the assumption that, as a new mother, she will be less committed to her job” might also constitute unlawful discrimination.  
In the 2006 fiscal year, the EEOC received 4,901 charges of pregnancy-based discrimination. The EEOC resolved 4,629 of those charges and recovered roughly $10.4 million for the plaintiffs.
Roughly half of U.S. states prohibit employment discrimination based on marital status, according to a December 2006 survey of anti-discrimination laws by the National Conference of State Legislatures. Alaska, California and the District of Columbia all provide protection against pregnancy, while Alaska and D.C. also include parenthood and childbirth in their respective protected classes. Pennsylvania prohibits discrimination based on familial status.
Dill said states with strong anti-discrimination laws tend to have stronger economies.
Webbert agrees with that correlation.
“I think it’s good for the economy for women not to feel like they can’t have children and not do jobs as well, because that keeps a lot of talented women out of the work force,” he said.