Gina Holmes started working as an executive assistant at Petrovich Development Co., a retail developer, in June 2004. The next month she told her boss, Paul Petrovich, the president of the company, that she was pregnant. In August, Petrovich began e-mailing Holmes to plan her maternity leave. In one message he wrote, “I need some honesty. How pregnant were you when you interviewed with me?”
Holmes explained that she had waited to announce her pregnancy, disclosing that she had lost pregnancies in the past. Concerned she was going to quit, Petrovich forwarded the e-mail to several people in the company involved in human resources, payroll and legal.
