Adapted from a story by The Washington Post’s Danielle Paquette.
On Monday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit sided with the California math consultant at the center of the case, which argued that considering prior compensation when setting a worker’s pay perpetuates gender disparities and defies the spirit of the Equal Pay Act.
Aileen Rizo, who trained educators on how to better teach math, sued her employer of three years, the Fresno County Office of Education, in 2012 after learning her male colleagues made significantly more money than she despite having less experience.
Since Rizo filed her lawsuit, Massachusetts and California have passed laws that block managers from requesting an applicant’s prior salary.
In court, Rizo’s employer admitted that her salary was lower and argued that the discrepancy stemmed from her prior salary — which, it asserted, had nothing to do with her gender.
In his opinion, Reindardt, who died last week at 87, disagreed with the Fresno County Office of Education’s logic.
“Before this decision, our law was unclear whether an employer could consider prior salary, either alone or in combination with other factors, when setting its employees’ salaries,” he wrote. “We now hold that prior salary alone or in combination with other factors cannot justify a wage differential.”
Ariane Hegewisch, a labor economist at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, said companies that determine a worker’s value based on prior pay exacerbate the gender wage gap.
“They import discrimination,” Hegewisch said. “If you start at a lower salary, the gap in actual money will get wider and wider every time you get the same percentage increase as your higher-paid colleague.”
The federal appeals court’s decision could help close the wage gap between the sexes, advocates say. In the United States, women earn an average of 82 cents for every dollar paid to men, according to the latest Pew Research Center analysis of median hourly earnings. The numbers are worse for women of color, with black women earning around 63 cents for every dollar paid to a man. Native American women and Latinas make even less.
“We know one of the challenges women face is they carry low pay from job to job,” said Fatima Goss Graves, chief executive officer of the National Women’s Law Center. “They are losing because there is this huge loophole in our equal-pay laws. This tightens it up.”
