29,000 Women Getting Checks in Settlement of Sex Bias Suit

Christmas is coming early for 29,000 California women who are being mailed retroactive unemployment benefit payments ranging from $700 to $1,200 under a $26.8-million settlement of a sex discrimination suit.

The payments stem from a 1976 court ruling that working women cannot be denied unemployment benefits because they leave their jobs to marry, rear children or join their husbands in new locations, the state Employment Development Department said.

The more than 29,000 recipients are women who were denied unemployment benefits between Aug. 22, 1968, and Dec. 31, 1976, and who filed a claim for them in the summer and fall of 1986, after the court settlement.

“This is a Christmas present long overdue for tens of thousands of California women,” said Richard Pearl, one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys in the suit. “I have received numerous calls in the past month asking if we could get the checks out by Christmas.”

The payments by the employment department grew out of a suit filed in 1972 on behalf of Betty Ann Boren, a Delano cashier who applied for unemployment benefits after she had been forced to leave her job. She could not find a baby sitter for her infant daughter and therefore could not work an early morning shift at a drive-in restaurant.

The state denied her unemployment benefits under a statute that was ruled unconstitutional by an appeals court in 1976 on grounds of sex discrimination.

The Legislature repealed the law in 1977. The Boren case later was certified as a class action on behalf of all women disqualified under the law between August, 1968, and the time of its appeal.

Employment department spokeswoman Suzanne Schroeder said Monday that officials initially estimated that 115,000 women were eligible for retroactive benefits, but many failed to file claims during the specified period.