Eight present and former female conductors and train operators filed a multimillion dollar lawsuit in Federal District Court in Manhattan against the New York City Transit Authority and several of its officers, charging that the TA had involuntarily laid them off because they were pregnant.

The suit seeks $5 million in compensatory and punitive damages for the named plaintiffs, and certification as a class action to include other female Transit Authority employees expected to come forward as a result of this suit.

According to the suit, requests by the pregnant conductors and train operators for light-duty work assignments were denied.

Instead, the TA laid them off against their will, even though light-duty requests from other employees were routinely granted.

Subsequently, the suit alleges, the laid-off women were unable to collect unemployment insurance because the TA advised the state Unemployment Insurance Division that they had gone on "voluntary" maternity leave.

The suit charges that the TA's actions were "dehumanizing" and caused the plaintiffs great stress, humiliation and emotional injury. The TA's actions, the suit alleges, were in violation of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, Sections 1 and 9, of the state constitution and the state's Human Rights Law.

The women, some accompanied by their children, appeared today at a press conference in Midtown to describe their experiences.

Also at the press conference were their attorneys, Kathleen Peratis, a nationally known women's rights advocate and former associate of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Philip Taubman, of Tellerman, Paticoff & Greenberg, who won a multimillion dollar settlement from the New York City Correction Department in a suit charging that pregnant women had been ordered to get abortions or lose their jobs.

Today, one of the plaintiffs, Leslie Palmer, a pregnant TA operator still at work, related her fear of being laid off after her pregnancy was discovered last week during an examination for an irritation of her eye. She had successfully concealed her condition until then.

Desiree Le Grand, another one of the plaintiffs present today at the press conference, became destitute after she was laid off; when she complained to TA about not being able to get unemployment compensation, LeGrand said she was told to "go on welfare" and "go to soup kitchen." When her baby was born on March 20 of this year, she was on public assistance.

"I realize it is hard to believe that this type of discrimination is still occurring in New York City in the 1990s," Peratis, one of the attorneys, noted. "But you see before you today women who were treated in the most degrading manner imaginable," she said, "and these women may represent a fraction of those affected."

"It is incredible that this went on in a public agency, especially in light of the widespread publicity and notoriety generated three years ago by the Correction Department scandal involving pregnant employees," Taubman, the other attorney, noted.

Named as defendants in the suit are Peter E. Stangl, chair of the Transit Authority; Alan F. Kiepper, TA president; David A. Winfield, TA vice president; Thomas Pendergast, senior VP in charge of Rapid Transit; Carmen Suardy, VP for labor relations; and Liz H. Low, VP for human resources.

In addition to Palmer and LeGrand, the other named plaintiffs in the case are Jane Mehrtens, Yolanda Sherrod, Joanne Fuller, Nadine Pryce, Tynetta Spencer and Janice Thomas.

Taubman and Peratis said they believed that once the case was made public, there would be other female TA employees who will come forward and that the liability of the TA could rise well beyond the $15 million sought by the named plaintiffs.