LUXEMBOURG (CN) — Employers can give single mothers additional parental leave beyond what the law provides but they don’t have to extend the same benefit to single fathers, the EU’s high court ruled Wednesday.
Extra maternity leave for single mothers to recover from pregnancy and childbirth does not constitute gender-based discrimination, the Court of Justice of the European Union held.
“Pregnant workers and workers who have recently given birth or who are breastfeeding are in an especially vulnerable situation which makes it necessary for the right to maternity leave to be granted to them,” the five-judge panel wrote.
The case was referred to the Luxembourg-based court by the Court of Cassation, France’s high court. A lower French labor court had ruled that supplementary maternity leave offered by social security agency CPAM to its female employees raising children alone was discriminatory.
A male employee had requested use of the additional leave time following the birth of his daughter but was denied on the grounds that he was not a woman. He was raising his child alone.
CPAM appealed the decision and the French high court asked the Court of Justice whether the labor agreement, which covers all employees of social security agencies, violated EU anti-discrimination regulations.
According to the 2000 Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, equality between men and women is guaranteed in the 27-member political and economic union, in particular regarding employment. However, the charter notes that: “The principle of equality shall not prevent the maintenance or adoption of measures providing for specific advantages in favor of the under-represented sex.”
The supplemental leave gives single mothers three months of leave with half pay or one and a half months of leave with full pay and unpaid leave of up to a year after they have exhausted their statutory maternity leave. French law requires employers to give all mothers, regardless of relationship status, paid maternity leave from six weeks before their due date until 10 weeks after they have given birth.
“The conditions for granting such leave must be directly linked to the protection of the woman’s biological and psychological condition and the special relationship between the woman and her child during the period following childbirth,” Wednesday’s ruling states, adding that such measures cannot be based on a woman’s capacity as a parent but only on the effects of pregnancy and childbirth.
Whether the labor agreement at issue is intended to protect women based on those factors was left for the French court to decide.
“It is for the referring court to determine whether the leave provided for in Article 46 of the collective agreement meets the conditions on which it may be considered that it is intended to protect female workers in connection with the effects of pregnancy and motherhood,” the Court of Justice ruled.
The case now returns to the French high court for a final decision.
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