Did the courts resolve the dilemma posed in Example 19. 2 correctly in your opinion? Why or why not?

Data from example 19. 2

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Susceptible Populations in the Hazardous Workplace Some employees are especially susceptible to occupational hazards. Pregnant women and women in the childbearing years are particularly vulnerable. When an employer attempts to manage a work situation that poses a hazardous threat, either the susceptible population can be separated from the hazard or the hazard can be controlled to a sufficient level that its risk is acceptable to even the most susceptible employees. The economic aspects of this choice are easily deduced from Figure 19.1. Suppose that the firm has few control options and is on the uppermost of the two marginal cost of precaution curves. By removing the susceptible population, it could face the low-exposure curve. Removal of the susceptible population results in lower marginal risk to the workers, lower costs to the firm, and less precaution taken. But is it fair to those who are removed from their jobs? This issue came to a head in 1978 when American Cyanamid decided to respond to an occupational risk by banning all fertile women from jobs in the section manufacturing lead chromate pigment at Willow Island, West Virginia. After reviewing the decision, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) cited the company under the general duty clause of the Occupational Safety and Health Act, which requires an employer to provide a workplace free of hazards, and fined it $10,000. That was not the last of it. In early 1980, the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers Union sued the company under the 1964 Civil Rights Act on the grounds that the company had discriminated unfairly against women. In March 1991, the Supreme Court ruled that banning fertile women from any workplace posing a risk to a fetus was not an acceptable way to control risk. The hazards must be reduced. Source: International Union v. Johnson Controls, 499 U.S. 187 (1991). EXAMPLE 19.2