Yesterday, the House Judiciary Committee made public Cummins’s written testimony following his March 6 appearance before the panel. Cummins confirmed that pregnancy and motherhood were used as excuses to deny an appointment. He added that Roehrkasse’s statement was “ridiculous” and “mocked” by people in the Arkansas legal community because Duke would have been perfectly able to serve as an interim U.S. attorney “for six weeks or more” if she would have been asked:
I told Elston that most people in our relatively small legal community had instantly mocked that statement because it was obvious Tim Griffin had been here for months for the purpose of taking over on my departure, because no person was aware of any conversations or other communications that might demonstrate that appointing the First Assistant was EVER a consideration, and because even though she actually had left the office a week before (on or about December 14) to give birth to twins, her due date was much later in early February and until she went out for an emergency delivery the week before she had been widely expected to continue to work in the office until February, so she actually could have been available for six weeks or more to serve as an interim had anybody ever considered that option. Nobody had and that was obvious. I told them it was a ridiculous thing to say in light of what many people here knew and that they shouldn’t repeat it.
The Pregnancy Discrimination Act states that employers, including the federal government, cannot discriminate on the “basis of pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions.”
Using discrimination against women as an excuse to install a political loyalist is no better.
more at:
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/05/03/cummins-pregnancy/
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