Second Circuit Clarifies Standard for Gender-Based Pay Disparity Claims
This article reviews the standard for bringing a Title VII gender-based pay discrimination claim in the Second Circuit prior to the 'Lenzi' ruling and discusses the Second Circuit's clarification of the law in 'Lenzi'. Finally, the article provides some insights for employers given the ruling in 'Lenzi'.
March 25, 2020 at 11:45 AM
8 minute read
Equal pay for equal work is the refrain long associated with the laudable goal of ensuring that female employees' salaries are on an equal footing with those of male employees, all else being equal. At the federal level, employees seeking to enforce their rights generally had two avenues of pursuing these claims in court: they could seek redress under the Equal Pay Act of 1963 (the Equal Pay Act) or under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act (Title VII) and its framework for sex-based pay disparity claims.
For the past several years, courts in the Second Circuit applied the Equal Pay Act standard to both Equal Pay Act claims and Title VII claims. The Equal Pay Act requires a plaintiff to show they are paid less than another employee of the opposite sex that is in a job that is substantially the same and requires equal skill and responsibility under working conditions that are similar. By conflating the Equal Pay Act's "equal pay for equal work" standard with Title VII, plaintiffs seeking to establish a gender-based pay disparity claim faced a legal standard that amounted to distinction without a difference.
This situation changed on Dec. 6, 2019, when a panel of three Second Circuit judges unanimously held, in what the court described as a clarification of the law, that a Title VII plaintiff need not establish that he or she performed "equal pay for equal work" using the Equal Pay Act standard. See Lenzi v. Systemax, 944 F.3d 97, 104 (2d Cir. 2019). Instead the court held that "all Title VII requires [is that] a plaintiff [] prove that her employer 'discriminate[d] against [her] with respect to [her] compensation … because of [her] … sex.'" See Lenzi, 944 F.3d 97 at 110; 42 U.S.C. §2000e-2(a)(1). In making this ruling, the Second Circuit likely made it easier for plaintiff attorneys to bring gender-based pay discrimination claims under Title VII.
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