Job Litigant Asked God to Guide Justices

On the Pennsylvania farm where she grew up, Lillian Garland learned both her love of God and her relish for a righteous fight from her grandmother, a white ex-Ziegfeld Girl and circus performer who defied society’s rules and married a black man.

That fighting part of her heritage helped Garland through the last five years, when she lost her job and custody of her daughter, as she fought all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court for a working mother’s right to be restored to her job after pregnancy.

On Tuesday, the religious part of her got the credit. Garland prayed every day for the news that the Supreme Court had upheld her argument.

Clasping a Crucifix

“I asked God to touch the Supreme Court justices and let them realize what women are fighting for,” she said, clasping the silver and onyx crucifix necklace she bought when her legal battle began.

“I wanted to be the last woman to have to suffer for deciding to have a baby.”

The Los Angeles woman had been a receptionist at California Federal Savings & Loan until 1982, when she returned from unpaid pregnancy leave to find her job filled.

Loss followed loss: She was evicted, then lost custody of her daughter to the child’s father, from whom Garland was divorced, because she could not show she had a permanent place to live and could not afford a lawyer. “I went through sheer hell,” she said.

Being forced to trade a job for a child “was almost an insult,” she said, like “saying, either be home and barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen or . . . put on a business suit and work, but you can’t do both, which is absolutely absurd--it’s ridiculous.”

Has Own Business

Nearly five years later, Garland--who has remarried, is a real estate agent at a business she co-owns and now is the victor in her long legal case--said it was worth it.

“It made me stronger, definitely,” she said. “I think that a wrong was done to me and I needed to set it straight. And, besides that, I was fighting for all women in the work force of child-bearing age . . . . I felt that a woman should not be penalized for deciding to have a family.”

On weekends, she visits her daughter--named Kekere Yuri Latik, African and Japanese names that Garland says mean “Freedom Lily of Long Life.” The child will turn 5 next month--”on Lincoln’s Birthday, isn’t that neat?”--and dimly understands what the fight was about.

“It’s about mommy and baby not being together because mommy had a baby--at least that’s what she told me, that’s her understanding of it,” said a beaming Garland, who keeps the child’s picture on her desk, alongside one of the American flags that adorn the desks at Veteran Real Estate.

Victory Called Significant

But little real estate business got done Tuesday between calls from reporters and supporters. Feminist leader Betty Friedan praised Garland for a “significant victory” which means “the working family will not lose the mother’s paycheck.”

Garland said she had “soap all over me” when the phone rang at 7:30 a.m. Tuesday with the news from a Washington, D.C., reporter. At first, she screamed--”AAAAAAAAA!” she demonstrated--then apologized, “And I said praise God, and it’s long overdue.”

It had taken Garland the usual nine months to have a baby--and almost five years to validate her decision, in the face of strong opposition.

‘Dragged Through Mud’

“I’ve been ridiculed and put down and dragged through the mud,” she said, adding that she found it “unbelievable” that some women’s groups opposed her. “I was fighting for a principle and I was willing to undergo the ridicule I had to.”

There was support, too, from her new husband, who “thought the whole thing was stupid to begin with--he said that women should be able to have maternity leave.”

And there was furtive endorsement from co-workers at Cal Fed, where she was reinstated briefly, and unhappily, after her suit was filed.

“They would come up to me secretly and tell me how much they were for me--even some of the top executives’ secretaries,” said Garland, whose case was paid for by the Employment Law Center of the Legal Aid Society of San Francisco. “Some of them had even said: ‘I can probably lose my job, but I am SO for you, because this is wrong.’ ”

She went through it, she said she realizes, for herself--she might like to have another child--for her co-workers, for women she had never met and for girls like her own daughter.

Heard Court Arguments

Last October, when she went to the Supreme Court to hear oral arguments in her case--and felt as scared as “Judy Garland in ‘The Wizard of Oz,’ going before the Great Wiz”--she was talking to reporters when some curious teen-age girls stopped and stared.

“I stepped away from the cameras,” she said, “and I walked over to the girls, teen-age girls, and introduced myself, and I said: ‘I am fighting for you, I am fighting so you will be able to one day, if you decide to get married and have a family, you’ll be able to keep your job if you want to have a baby,’ and a little girl looked at me and said: ‘Thank you.’ ”