Salary history cannot justify sex-based pay gaps: U.S. appeals court
Source: Reuters
(Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court on Monday ruled employers cannot use workers’ salary histories to justify gender-based pay disparities, saying that would perpetuate a wage gap that is “an embarrassing reality of our economy.”
An 11-judge panel of the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously that California’s Fresno County could not pay a female math consultant, Aileen Rizo, thousands of dollars less than male colleagues who did similar work because of her salary history, reversing a decision from a smaller panel last year.
Congress outlawed pay discrimination based on gender in the federal Equal Pay Act in 1963.
“At the time of the passage of the (EPA), an employee’s prior pay would have reflected a discriminatory marketplace that valued the equal work of one sex over the other,” Circuit Judge Stephen Reinhardt wrote. “Congress simply could not have intended to allow employers to rely on these discriminatory wages as a justification for continuing to perpetuate wage differentials.”
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BUSINESS NEWS APRIL 9, 2018 / 5:56 PM / UPDATED 2 HOURS AGO
Robert Iafolla
3 MIN READ
Read more: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-employment-paygap/salary-history-cannot-justify-sex-based-pay-gaps-u-s-appeals-court-idUSKBN1HG34W
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