Equal pay for equal work is a bedrock concept that no reasonable person would dispute as being professionally and morally appropriate. Yet, it is an ideal that is far from ubiquitous in the workplace. As an understated, but equally important, corollary to the #MeToo movement, resolving this historical inequity is the focus of increased attention of state and local legislation. State and local governments are taking novel approaches to combat the issue and employers must be prepared to adjust business practices to ensure compliance.

The federal Equal Pay Act of 1963, or EPA, enacted one year before Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, was the first legislation to recognize and attempt to combat the issue. It straightforwardly prohibits employers from discriminating “between employees on the basis of sex by paying wages to employees in such establishment at a rate less than the rate at which [it] pays wages to employees of the opposite sex in such establishment for equal work on jobs the performance of which requires equal skill, effort, and responsibility, and which are performed under similar working conditions.” Under the EPA, lawful differences in pay must be attributable to seniority systems, merit systems, quantity/quality of production systems, or “any factor other than sex that is job related.”

Originally published in Law360 on October 22, 2018.