“They told me they don’t provide light duty for pregnancy and that I had become a liability,” she said.

The case has echoes of one of the first great legal victories in the women’s rights movement. More than half a century ago, Lorena Weeks, a Georgia telephone company clerk, applied for a better-paying job and was told she was ineligible because it involved lifting a piece of equipment that weighed about 30 pounds. The fact that the object in question was actually pushed around on a dolly and that Lorena’s own job required her to lift a 34-pound typewriter onto her desk every morning did not appear to enter into the company’s equation.

Weeks’ lawyer, Sylvia Roberts, convinced the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals that the rule was both paternalistic and arbitrary, punctuating her argument by lifting a series of objects in the courtroom. She told me once that she believed her performance of hoisting a workbench helped win the day. That was in 1969. And, now, here we are with Peggy Young and her packages.

It’s ironic, really, since women of childbearing age probably spend more time picking up heavy — and frequently squirming — objects than most men. Young has two older children who were born three years apart. When she was pregnant with her second child, she noted, “I had zero issues holding my 3-year-old. Who I’m pretty sure weighed more than any packages they’d give me.”

Further irony: the courts have ruled repeatedly that the federal Pregnancy Discrimination Act does not require an employer to accommodate a pregnant worker. Basically, a boss just has to prove that he’d be equally unfeeling if she fell down the stairs at home and broke her leg. (U.P.S. says it believes its policy was “lawful, evenly and consistently applied at the time to all employees.”)