Developments In Equal Pay Litigation - 2022 Update

32 | Developments in Equal Pay Litigation © 2022 Seyfarth Shaw LLP other finalist for the position withdrew from consideration. 256 The employer also claimed that the comparator was a better negotiator than plaintiff, among other things. Applying the more lenient burden- shifting standards applicable to plaintiffs’ Title VII claim, the court held that this was sufficient to place the burden back on Plaintiff to prove pretext. 257 The variety of ways that economic considerations intrude upon employers’ compensation decisions, and the ways that those decisions will be viewed by a court, are difficult to categorize or generalize about. Business considerations vary widely. To take just a few recent examples: In one case, the Eighth Circuit held that a school district had adequately explained the fact that plaintiff’s job had been targeted for downsizing because the subject the plaintiff taught did not appear on statewide testing and therefore did not require two programmers, and because the director of fine arts could handle both elementary and secondary fine arts programming. 258 In another recent case, a court held that an employer had justified a pay disparity between the current occupier of a position as compared to her predecessor where it was clear that the plaintiff’s position was temporary; the court held that the temporary nature of a position may constitute a factor other than sex to justify an otherwise illegal pay disparity provided that the position was temporary in fact, and that the employee in that position knew it was temporary. 259 And another court held the salary hiring guidelines put in place by the USPS could justify a pay disparity where those guidelines allowed for an offer to be made that was up to five percent higher than a new hire’s private sector salary in order to stay competitive to attract talent from the private sector. 260 Employers should beware, however, that fine-grained differences between employees—while perhaps legitimate as “factors other than sex”—will often not be weighed and decided by a court prior to trial. Those decisions are often left for the jury, meaning that employers face the unpalatable prospect of a jury trial, even if they have a meritorious defense. 261 Those cases show that courts can be reluctant to 256 Id. at *8. 257 Id. at *9. 258 Routen v. Suggs , 772 F. App’x 377, 378-79 (8th Cir. 2019) (holding that plaintiff’s sex was not a reason for her pay cut or the reduction in the length of her contract because the evidence at trial showed that the school district had taken these actions because of economic and administrative concerns, rather than discrimination). 259 Cavazos v. Hous. Auth. of Bexar Cnty. , No. SA-17-cv-00432-FB, 2019 WL 1048855, at *7 (W.D. Tex. Mar. 5, 2019) (holding that the temporary nature of a position may constitute a factor other than sex to justify an otherwise illegal pay disparity, but denying summary judgment because the evidence did not establish as a matter of law that plaintiff’s performance as an interim Executive Director could be considered a temporary reassignment because, among other things, she had been told that she was the search committee’s second-choice candidate and that she would be automatically selected if the first choice-candidate declined (which he did)). 260 Ruiz-Justiniano v. U.S. Postal Serv. , No. 16-cv-1526 (MEL), 2018 WL 3218363 (D.P.R. June 29, 2018) (holding that salary guideline in place at the time of the female comparator’s hire, which allowed her to be given an offer up to five percent higher than her private sector salary and was intended to allow USPS to stay competitive in outside hiring, justified pay disparity and was not pretext). See also Terry v. Gary Cmty. Sch. Corp. , 910 F.3d 1000, 1010 (7th Cir. 2018) (holding that a salary freeze provided an adequate justification for a pay disparity because: “there is nothing from which we may reasonably infer that there were ways to circumvent the salary freeze, and that because the District did not take such measures, the District was simply choosing not to increase [plaintiff’s] salary.”); Reddy v. Ala. Dep’t of Educ. , No. 2:16-cv-01844-SGC, 2018 WL 4680152, at *6-7 (N.D. Ala. Sept. 28, 2018) (holding that employer adequately justified pay disparity between two physicians on the basis of those physicians: (1) different levels of relevant experience; (2) different levels of clinical practice experience; (3) different medical specialty; and (4) prior salary history); Hayes v. Deluxe Mfg. Ops. LLC , No. 1:16-cv-02056-RWS-RGV, 2018 WL 1461690 (N.D. Ga. Jan. 9, 2018) (“[Employer] has shown that the pay disparity between [plaintiff] and her male comparators was based on increases in the starting hourly wage over the years, market considerations, merit-based increases, and consideration of an applicant's experience and qualifications, and it has therefore offered factors that were not based on sex and ‘are sufficient to sustain its burden to show that the salary disparity does not result from sex discrimination.’”) (quoting Schwartz v. Fla. Bd. of Regents , 954 F.2d 620, 623 (11th Cir. 1991)). 261 See, e.g., Gonzales v. Cnty. of Taos , No. 17-cv-582-F, 2018 WL 3647206, at *15 (D.N.M. Aug. 1, 2018) (refusing to weigh an employer’s “other factors” at the summary judgment stage. The court held that relative levels of experience and qualifications “are questions of fact for a jury to decide and are not appropriate for summary judgment”); Ackerson v. Rector & Visitors of the Univ. of Va. , No. 3:17-cv-11, 2018 WL 3209787, at *7 (W.D. Va. June 27, 2018) (holding that two university administrators were paid at different rates because of their different credentials, experience, and achievements, and refusing to undertake that analysis, but holding that while such “potential differences in qualifications, certifications, and employment history could explain the wage disparity between the claimants and [comparator], the EPA requires that a factor other than sex in fact explains the salary disparity”) (emphasis in original); Bowen v. Manheim Remarketing, Inc. , 882 F.3d 1358, 1363 (11th Cir. 2018) (reversing summary judgment and emphasizing employer’s “heavy burden” to establish that a factor other than sex can account for the pay differential where plaintiff’s salary had consistently been set at the low point of the compensation range, even after she had established herself in the position and demonstrated that she was an effective arbitration manager, and where plaintiff had presented evidence that the