U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco. Photo: Jason Doiy/ALM
Employers are not permitted to use a worker's prior pay to justify compensating female and male employees differently for the same work, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday in a closely watched case confronting the contours of the federal Equal Pay Act.
The Equal Pay Act, or EPA, "requires employers to demonstrate that only job-related factors, not sex, caused any wage disparities that exist between employees of the opposite sex who perform equal work," Judge Morgan Christen of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit wrote in the case Rizo v. Yovino, where the Fresno County school district was sued for alleged pay discrimination.
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Mike Scarcella
Mike Scarcella is a senior editor in Washington on ALM Media's regulatory desk. Contact him at [email protected]. On Twitter: @MikeScarcella. Mike works on a slate of newsletters: Supreme Court Brief | Higher Law | Compliance Hot Spots | Labor of Law.
