A Distressing Interpretation of the Equal Pay Act

The old saying in law school is that "bad facts make bad law." On bad facts, the Ninth Circuit has issued a puzzling decision on the Equal Pay Act that will have sweeping consequences throughout California, Oregon Washington and the West.The case, Rizo v. Yovino, et al.,  involves an admittedly foolish payroll practice in the Fresno County Public schools. Instead of evaluating new hires on the basis of their credentials and past work experience, the County determines a new hire's compensation based on her prior salary in her previous job, adding 5%, and then placing the new employee in the corresponding step of the County salary schedule. This procedure is applied even to employees who were formerly working outside of Fresno County, as was the plaintiff in this case. When she applied for a job in Fresno County, Ms. Rizo received a 5% bump up from her $50,000 salary in Arizona, and then was placed on Step One of the hiring schedule. When she realized that she…

Read more detail on Recent Employment Law posts –

This entry was posted in Employment and Labour Law and tagged , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply