44 | Developments in Equal Pay Litigation 2026 ©2026 Seyfarth Shaw LLP that the members of the collective action were subjected to the same discriminatory compensation structure, those claims may be allowed to proceed to trial on a collective basis. For example, in CarteeHaring v. Central Bucks School District,298 a schoolteacher alleged she was paid less than male teachers at the same level. The salaries of teachers in the school district at issue were set by a salary grid, which contained increasing “steps” along the vertical y axis and educational levels listed horizontally across the x axis. The steps reflected the number of years of experience the teacher had been teaching in public schools in Pennsylvania. The educational levels reflected the level of education the teacher had received.299 Based on her 14 years of experience teaching in Pennsylvania public schools, the plaintiff should have been placed in step 15. But she had been placed in step 1. Seven other teachers in the district also testified that they were placed in the wrong step or educational levels when they began teaching for the district.300 The Plaintiff had never sought conditional certification of her putative collective action, but eventually sought final collective action certification of all female teachers who were employed by the district from 2000 to the present who were subject to the district’s salary schedules.301 The court held an evidentiary hearing, wherein eight teachers testified in favor of certification. The court found this sufficient to allow the case to proceed to trial as a finally certified collective action. “The testimony given at the evidentiary record made clear that Plaintiff established, by a preponderance of the evidence, that several women were similarly situated to Plaintiff in that they were also female educators, employed by the District, who were subjected to the same District Salary Schedules.”302 Another issue that often comes up in the context of collective action certification is the concept of equitable tolling. Unlike a class action, the claims of putative members of a collective action continue to waste away until they join the case as opt-in plaintiffs. Under certain circumstances, the doctrine of equitable tolling can be used to grant putative opt-ins the tolling they would have received if they had joined the lawsuit at an earlier date. It is usually premised on an argument that putative members of the collective action were somehow prevented from receiving notice of the lawsuit or acting on their rights. Most courts have found the doctrine inapplicable to the claims of absent collective action members. For example, in Dixon v. Edward D. Jones & Co., L.P.,303 the employer filed a motion to dismiss the complaint and also sought to stay discovery pending the outcome of that motion. The court granted the stay, holding that the employer had shown a likelihood of success on the merits of that motion, and that class or collective-wide discovery would be a substantial hardship.304 Plaintiffs sought equitable tolling, arguing the stay would prejudice putative members of the collective action because their claims would continue to waste during the pendency of the stay. The court noted that this was an argument advanced for the benefit of parties who were not yet in the case, and the plaintiffs who were already in the case would suffer no diminishment in their suit, because their claims were already tolled. The court refused to of proceeding as a certified collective action: “the different ways in which physicians operate their medical practices can serve to differentiate them from one another such that they should not be able to proceed collectively,” and the dissimilarities among plaintiff’s medical practices weighed in favor of decertifying the collective action: “because the compensation scheme looks at the specific factual situation of each physicians’ practice, pursuing this avenue would require each plaintiff to present evidence that is specific to her medical practice”). 298 Cartee-Haring v. Cent. Bucks Sch. Dist., No. 20-cv-1995, 21-cv-2587, 2022 WL 3647819 (E.D. Pa. Aug. 24, 2022). 299 Id. at *1. 300 Id. at *4. Plaintiff also identified 26 male teachers who were placed at a higher step than their years of experience or education would warrant. 301 Id. at *5. 302 Id. at *6. The court also held that the alleged discriminatory payments were a continuing violation, meaning that the statute of limitations begins to run on the date of the last occurrence of discrimination, rather than the first. This meant that plaintiffs’ statute of limitations was tied to their last paycheck, rather than to their date of hire, when the discriminatory payment allegedly began. Id. at *7. “Unequal payment constitutes a continuing violation when an ‘employer's continued failure to pay the member of the lower paid sex the wage rate paid to the higher paid sex occurs. It is no defense that the unequal payments began prior to the EPA's statutory period.” Id. (quoting 29 C.F.R. § 1620.13(b)(5)). The employer immediately sought to appeal the court’s statute of limitations ruling, but the court held that it had not established its right to an interlocutory appeal. Cartee-Haring v. Cent. Bucks Sch. Dist., No. 20-cv1995, 21-cv-2587, 2022 WL 16553376 (E.D. Pa. Oct. 31, 2022). 303 Dixon v. Edward D. Jones & Co., L.P., No. 4:22-cv-00284-SEP, 2022 WL 4245423 (E.D. Mo. Sept. 15, 2022). 304 Id. at *3.
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