This is Tyler, a staff attorney in the Pittsburgh office. I’m writing to let you know about a new brief we just filed in an equal pay case.
Imagine working as a credentialed specialist in your field for decades… and then discovering male colleagues with much less experience earned a much bigger paycheck.
Outrageous, right?
That’s why we filed an amicus brief in Schulman v. Zoetis, a New Jersey pay equity case, in the federal district court for the district of New Jersey. We partnered with Equal Rights Advocates and fourteen public interest organizations, along with local New Jersey counsel Catherine Merino Reisman of Reisman Carolla Gran & Zuba LLP, to file the brief.
Schulman is a veterinary anatomic pathologist who accepted a job at Zoetis Reference Labs in New Jersey in 2020. In her complaint, Schulman alleges she was paid approximately $105,000 less than one man with six fewer years of experience and $70,000 less than a male colleague with nineteen fewer years of experience.
The employer is attempting to justify discriminatory pay practices by arguing employee salaries were based on prior pay and at a different company.
Our brief makes several arguments:
● Yes, the gender pay gap is real.
● An employer’s reliance on salary history/prior pay to set an employee’s current or future pay contributes to and perpetuates the pay gap.
● The Third Circuit would likely find that using prior pay to determine an employee’s salary contributes to the gender pay gap and cannot serve as a defense to the federal Equal Pay Act claim.
● The decision in this case will be of particular importance to women of color and working-class women, because of how those women are more seriously affected by the gender wage gap.
Research affirms the wage gap affects women from the moment they enter the workforce and follows them throughout their careers. There’s little individual women can do, including earning higher degrees or changing industries, to mitigate these deeply rooted pay disparities.
We don’t need empowerment tips, we need legal and institutional reform—and that’s exactly why we filed this brief.
You can read our brief here.
