SACRAMENTO–A bill by California State Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez (D-San Diego) to eliminate discriminatory practices in California’s workers’ compensation system that penalize women was approved Wednesday by the State Senate on a 24-16 vote. The bill will now return to the Assembly for a concurrence vote.
While current workers compensation law prohibits workers’ compensation claims to be expressly denied because of an employee’s gender, age, religion or several other characteristics, a loophole in California’s workers compensation system has shortchanged female workers by citing so-called “pre-existing conditions” that exclusively or predominantly affect women. The result is that female workers are often compensated less for the same injury than a male worker.
“We can help thousands of women who are victims of this gender bias every year by simply undoing the discriminatory policies that shortchange women on the job,” said Gonzalez, a former labor leader and Chair of the Assembly Select Committee on Women in the Workplace. “California should be committed to ensuring everyone is treated equally under the law, and this is an important step to finally end the bias against women in our workers’ compensation system.”
Sen. Marty Block, D-San Diego, who managed AB 305 on the Senate floor and serves as the bill’s principal co-author, said the national conversation around fair pay must also focus on all workplace protections and benefits, including the workers’ compensation system.
“California is a leader on workforce equity issues,” Block said. “AB 305 is part of the critical fight for equity in the workplace, including equal pay for equal work.”
According to a workers compensation attorney, under current law, employees filing a workers’ compensation claim must be examined by a physician who is required by current law to state the disability and its cause. The doctor’s report must apportion what approximate percentage of the disability was caused by the work activity versus other factors, which have included many of the so-called “pre-existing conditions” that Gonzalez’s Assembly Bill 305 would eliminate from consideration when determining an injured female employee’s claim: pregnancy, menopause and injuries sustained contemporaneously during sexual harassment.
AB 305 also prevents psychiatric disability or impairment caused by any of those conditions, or by contemporaneous instances of sexual harassment from being considered when apportioning a work injury. Additionally, AB 305 requires that workplace injuries that cause breast cancer do not receive a lower workers’ compensation rating than the rating for prostate cancer.
