Townes Hall, University of Texas at Austin School of Law. (Courtesy photo)

The University of Texas at Austin School of Law can't seem to shake allegations of unfairness in faculty pay, which have dogged the campus for nearly a decade.

Linda Mullenix. (Courtesy photo)

Professor Linda Mullenix sued the school in federal court on Dec. 12 claiming she is paid significantly less than men on the faculty with comparable experience. That action comes nine years after Mullenix's first pay discrimination suit against the school and eight years after the law school's former dean departed under pressure due to the controversial practice of using funds from the law school's foundation for forgivable loans to certain faculty members. (The $5.4 million in loans were made almost exclusively to male professors and the university ended the practice in 2011, concluding it lacked proper oversight.)

Mullenix's latest suit against the school alleges that administrators have purposefully held down her annual raises in retaliation for her earlier complaints about pay disparities along gender lines. Her suit alleges that she earned $20,000 less than a professor who also teaches civil procedure and who has about 10 fewer years of teaching experience. Moreover, it claims that tenured female faculty members at the law schools earned, on average, $20,000 less than tenured men during the past three years.

Mullenix's problems at the school don't end with her lower compensation, according to her suit.

"Most disturbingly, because of Professor Mullenix's opposition to UT Law's unequal pay practices, she has been made a pariah by the administration," her complaint reads. "New professors are told to stay away from her and that she is 'poison.' Professor Mullenix's marginalization is also held out as a warning to other professors who might speak out."

Mullenix also claims she was relegated to relatively powerless faculty committees and has been passed over for an associate dean position in retaliation for her compensation whistle-blowing.

A university spokesman said Monday that it will provide more details on how faculty pay is determined when it files a response to Mullenix's complaint, and pointed to a 2018 report that found the salaries of female faculty on the entire campus were, on average, slightly higher than those of men.

"The law school, like the university as a whole, strongly supports equitable pay based on merit and performance, and UT has taken efforts to ensure salary equity for faculty members across campus," said J.B. Bird, the university's director of media relations. "Law school faculty pay is determined by a review of teaching, service, and scholarship with professional criteria applied to make these determinations."

Mullenix's attorney, Colin Walsh of Austin law firm Wiley Walsh, said she planned to make a press statement on the suit outside the law school on Monday afternoon. Mullenix did not respond to requests for comment.

Texas isn't the only law school to grapple with allegations of unequal pay for women faculty. The University of Denver Sturm College of Law in 2018 entered into a consent agreement with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to resolve allegations of widespread underpayment of full-time women law faculty. As part of that agreement, the school paid nearly $2.7 million to female law professors who for years earned less than their male colleagues. But a year later, a female associate professor again sued claiming unequal pay. That case is ongoing.

Mullenix, who has taught at Texas Law since 1991, first sued the law school over pay issues in 2010, after discovering that she was paid about $50,000 less than a newly hired man who teaches the same subject. That suit settled in 2011 with Mullenix receiving a $20,000 raise and a $250,000 forgivable loan from the school's foundation—the same type of loan that would lead then-dean Larry Sager to a hasty resignation in 2011 after it became public that he had authorized a $500,000 loan to himself. Mullenix was one of the three women to receive a forgivable loan between 2003 and 2010, out of 21 faculty members.

Her latest suit alleges that the law school used amortized payments of $25,000 a year to conceal the fact that her salary remained below that of similarly situated male professors. A male professor teaching the same subject earned more than $134,000 total than she did over the past three years, Mullenix claims. In all, Mullenix earned $337,418 for the 2019-2020 academic year, compared with $387,401 in compensation for the male professor, the suit says.

Mullenix alleges violations of the Equal Pay Act, sex discrimination, and retaliation. She is seeking an unspecified amount of back pay, benefits, lost wages and other damages.