Takeaway: Employers must still comply with state pay equity statutes and other circuit court decisions interpreting the Equal Pay Act (EPA), which may require job-relatedness or a legitimate business reason to satisfy the “factor other than sex” defense. Accordingly, employers should rely on this 2nd Circuit decision narrowly to apply to EPA claims brought within this circuit, which includes Connecticut, New York and Vermont.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals clarified that the Equal Pay Act (EPA) does not require employers that raise the “factor other than sex” affirmative defense to show that the factor is job-related. Thus, under the EPA, the pay disparity can be based on any factor except sex.
The plaintiff, a female culinary school professor in New York, alleged that she was paid less than a male professor who managed a similar course load. The pay disparity began when they were hired at different salaries. When hired, the plaintiff had 15 years of culinary experience, several cooking awards and two years of university studies, whereas her male comparator had an associate degree, 23 years of culinary experience, previous teaching experience, and superior performance in the cooking and teaching demonstrations during the application process. The plaintiff did not claim that her starting salary was the result of sex-based pay discrimination.
The employer provided the employees with pay increases according to the sex-neutral terms of a collective bargaining agreement...
A front-page article with the byline of veteran New York Times opinion writer Nicholas Kristof is the latest poisonous example of what I call the NGO “halo effect.” Headlined “The Silence That Mee...