Derek Rotondo said he felt like he was living in the 1950s when he discovered he would not be able to take advantage of JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s 16 weeks of paid parental leave once he and his wife had their second child this summer.

Rotondo discovered that his company considered him a “secondary caregiver” and was only entitled, then, to two weeks of paid leave. JPMorgan's human resources department, he said, told him “birth mothers are what we consider primary caregivers.”

Those claims were made against JPMorgan in a new case filed in Ohio with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on Thursday. The charge was filed by the law firm Outten & Golden and the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio on behalf of all fathers who are subject to the policy. The lawyers involved in Rotondo's case said they estimated it could affect hundreds of thousands of workers. JPMorgan's parental leave policy, they alleged, discriminates using sex-based stereotypes.

A JPMorgan fraud investigator, based in Columbus, Ohio, said Rotondo—to receive the full paid leave—had two options: prove his wife was in such poor health she could not take care of the baby or that she had returned to work. These options, Rotondo said, were additional hoops that a “mother” would not have to go through.

“It's not a very modern way of looking at individual choices that every family makes,” Rotondo said. “Just because I'm a father, not a mother, it shouldn't prevent me from being the primary caregiver for my baby.”

A JPMorgan Chase spokeswoman said Thursday the company received the complaint and is reviewing it.


Derek Rotondo

In the charge, Rotondo is seeking changes to the company's parental leave policy to make it equitable between mothers and fathers, as well as monetary relief for him and other fathers who have lost out on paid leave.

The issue ties to a debate about paid parental leave, which has been adopted by major companies in recent years, as well as suggested under the Trump administration's proposed budget. The broader question the case poses is whether whether men should be equally considered for parental leave.

“The policy reflects the idea that males are breadwinners and women primary caregivers. Those stereotypes are unlawful,” said Galen Sherwin, senior staff attorney at the ACLU's Women's Rights Project. “You can't discriminate based on men and women and that's what this policy does. Those type of stereotypes harm both male and female workers.”

The Rotondo family welcomed their second son last week. Rotondo's wife is a special education teacher and will return to school in August. He will receive two weeks paid leave, under JPMorgan's policy, and take paid time off for several weeks to spend time with their new son and 2-year-old. Because she was on summer vacation when she had the baby, she did not have the option to go back to work.

JPMorgan updated its parental leave policy in January 2016 to allow for 16 weeks of paid leave, instead of 12 for primary caregivers, according to a survey of leave policies by the National Partnership for Women & Families. Secondary caregivers are given two weeks under this policy.

Several large banks, including Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley, have similar policies with between 12 and 16 weeks for primary caregivers and two to four weeks for secondary caregivers.

In announcing the policy, John Donnelly, JPMorgan's head of human resources, said in a statement last year: “We wanted to be known as a company where health is really part of our overall culture.” He added: “A lot of people in our demographic are having children, and this is something that just helps support them at these critical moments that take place in life.”

Peter Romer-Friedman, counsel at Outten & Golden's Washington office, said many parental leave policies do not specifically define secondary or primary caregivers. He said it's rare for a company to explicitly treat women and men differently, however.

“It is long past the time that American companies implement parental leave policies that comply with federal law and treat men and women equally,” Romer-Friedman said.

Romer-Friedman previously represented Josh Levs, a former CNN reporter who challenged CNN's alleged failure to give paid parental leave to biological fathers on equal terms as biological mothers. Levs settled his charge in 2015.

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