Developments in Equal Pay Litigation

16 | Developments in Equal Pay Litigation © 2021 Seyfarth Shaw LLP company’s own internal salary review was sufficient to demonstrate comparability among jobs sufficient to survive a motion to dismiss. 111 The complaint pointed to the nonprofit’s own salary survey, which was performed for the alleged purpose of uncovering salary discrepancies. The court held that this was sufficient to suggest that the jobs surveyed were at least comparable: “courts should not require so much detail about similarity at the front end of a lawsuit as to make equal pay laws largely inapplicable to this class of employees.” 112 More often, however, courts look to specific job duties to determine whether work is truly equal, and they will discount formal corporate hierarchies or pay grades if they do not reflect the true nature of the work performed by employees. For example, in Heatherly v. University of Alabama Board of Trustees , 113 the Eleventh Circuit upheld a decision by the District Court for the Northern District of Alabama holding that a job evaluation system, on its own, could not establish a prima facie EPA violation. The Eleventh Circuit agreed with the district court in refusing to credit plaintiff’s claim that the employer valued all jobs within the same pay grade equally, noting that the salaries within plaintiff’s own pay grade ranged widely. 114 After comparing plaintiff’s job duties versus those of her comparators side-by-side, the Eleventh Circuit concluded that, “a reasonable juror could not find that [plaintiff] engaged in work that was substantially similar to that performed by her alleged comparators.” 115 Courts’ tendency to look beneath formal job classifications cuts both ways; plaintiffs can sometimes use this to show they performed equal work to comparators in a more advanced pay grade or level. For example, in Gallaway v. Rand Corp. , 116 a Contract Administrator at a research organization, whose primary duties involved assisting researchers in preparing grants and proposals, alleged that she was paid less than male Contract Administrators in her same department. The employer maintained four levels of Contract Administrators. The four levels had the same job description but were supposed to differ in terms of the level of complexity of the work and the amount of supervision required, as well as the prerequisites for levels of education and years of work experience . 117 Plaintiff was employed at the second level but compared herself to male employees in the third level. The employer introduced evidence that showed that there were at least three female Contract Administrators at the third level who earned more than Plaintiff based on their experience and the increased responsibilities of that level, and that no Contract Administrator at the second level earned more than Plaintiff . 118 However, the Contract Administrator Team Lead testified that plaintiff performed the same duties and required the same level of supervision as third level Contract Administrators. Statistics also verified that plaintiff handled the most awards and the highest aggregate total of grant money of all Contract Administrators . 119 The Court concluded that a reasonable jury could find that she performed equal work as her male comparators court held that plaintiff’s obligation at the motion to dismiss stage was low; she was not required to “show” anything, but only to allege with some plausibility facts sufficient to state a claim for relief. Id. 111 Id. at *9. 112 Id . 113 Heatherly v. Univ. of Ala. Bd. of Trs. , 778 F. App’x 690 (11th Cir. 2019). In that case, the Director of Human Resources for a university brought a federal EPA claim alleging that she was paid less than three male employees in director-level positions. Plaintiff argued that the university used a job evaluation system, the Mercer System, to establish pay grades for different jobs based on such factors as knowledge and experience, job complexity and creativity, and physical demands and working conditions in accordance with standards determined by the university. Heatherly v. Univ. of Ala. Bd. of Trs. , No. 7:16-CV-00275-RDP, 2018 WL 3439341, at *13 (N.D. Ala. July 17, 2018). Because the use of that system established the same pay grade for her position versus those of her male comparators, she argued that this established the “equal work” prong of her prima facie case. Id. The court disagreed, holding that binding precedent forced it to look at actual job content to determine whether the skill, effort, and responsibility required is substantially equal; it could not merely rely on a job evaluation system. Id. Moreover, because the job evaluation system allowed for wide salary ranges even within the same pay grade, this showed that “an employee’s categorization into a pay grade does not pinpoint that employee’s exact salary and that multiple employees within the same pay grade may have and earn varying salaries.” Id. at *14. 114 Heatherly. , 778 F. App’x at 692. 115 Id. at 693. 116 Gallaway v. Rand Corp. , No. 2:18-CV-01379-RJC, 2020 WL 1984312 (W.D. Pa. Apr. 27, 2020). 117 Id. at *2. 118 Id. at *11. 119 Id. at *12.