A former top aide says Fulton County’s district attorney fired her for being pregnant, and the Supreme Court is weighing whether his office waited too long to argue that federal job-bias law never covered her.
Story Highlights
- The Supreme Court heard arguments on Monday, November 2, in Younge v. Fulton Judicial Circuit District Attorney’s Office.
- Jasmine Younge says she was fired about two weeks after she told Howard she was pregnant.
- The office won by arguing she was Howard’s “personal staff,” a defense it did not raise until 2022.
- The office says poor performance, not pregnancy, led to the firing. The justices have not ruled.
What The Justices Heard And Why It Matters
On Monday, November 2, the Supreme Court heard arguments in a case brought by Jasmine Younge, who holds a doctorate and was hired by then-District Attorney Paul Howard as the third-ranking official in the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office in the Atlanta area. She says the office fired her in July 2019 because she was pregnant. The office never had to answer that charge in front of a jury. It won by saying that, as a close aide to an elected official, she was not covered by Title VII, the main federal law against job discrimination. The law leaves out elected officials and the people they choose for their “personal staff.”
The question before the justices is about timing. Under federal court rules, a side that has a defense of this kind, called an affirmative defense, is supposed to list it in its first written answer to the lawsuit. The office did not. Its lawyer spotted the personal-staff exemption about a year later, while drafting a request for summary judgment, which is a ruling that ends a case without a trial. By then, discovery, the stage when both sides trade evidence, had closed in January 2022. The office never amended its answer, and the trial judge let the defense in anyway.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit agreed in April 2025. It said a late defense is allowed when it does not hurt the other side, and it found that Younge was not harmed because the record already held plenty of evidence on her role. Younge argues that this lets defendants slip around the rules that limit late changes to a case. The office argues the rules exist to decide cases on their merits, and that a defense raised late without harm to anyone fits that purpose. The justices have not ruled.
What The Aide Reported Happened Inside The DA’s Office
Howard hired Younge in April 2019 as deputy chief of staff and director of policy and programs, a job that paid a little over $120,000 a year. According to the appeals court opinion, she told Howard she was pregnant around July 1, and he fired her about two weeks later. She alleges he stopped meeting with her, left her out of meetings, took away duties and treated her dismissively after she told him.
Court papers filed in 2020 alleged that Howard became “highly agitated” when Younge handed him paperwork on July 1 showing her pregnancy was high-risk. These are her allegations, and no court has ruled on them. Younge sued in February 2020. Howard was dismissed from the case in 2022, and the appeals court said her pregnancy claim under Title VII was the only claim left when the case ended. Howard lost his 2020 reelection race to Fani Willis.
What The District Attorney’s Office Says Happened Instead
The office denies that pregnancy played any part. In court filings, it said Younge had serious performance problems, treated Howard “appallingly” and drew many complaints from co-workers during her short time there. Howard testified that long-serving staff complained about her often.
The office says Howard decided at the end of June 2019 to fire Younge after he saw her mistreat a staff attorney, and that she told him she was pregnant a day or two after that decision. In its account, Howard then carried out the firing he had already planned. Because the case ended on the personal-staff exemption, no judge or jury has weighed her account against the office’s.
Why Conservatives Should Care About This Case
Government offices should play by the same rules they enforce on everyone else. Court rules require every side to lay its defenses on the table early, so the other side knows what it is fighting. Younge’s lawyers argue that when a public office can skip that step and still win, the people suing it are held to stricter rules than the government is. The office answers that courts should reach the right result under the law Congress wrote, and that Congress chose to leave an elected official’s closest aides out of Title VII.
The stakes reach well past one Atlanta office. Women file thousands of pregnancy discrimination charges each year with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the federal agency that enforces job-bias laws, and in about two-thirds of them they say they were fired. A clear rule on when defenses must be raised would tell workers and public employers alike where they stand from the start.
Sources:
scotusblog.com, ajc.com, law.justia.com, oyez.org, shrm.org, eeoc.gov
