EEOC-Initiated Litigation - 2022 Edition

© 2022 Seyfarth Shaw LLP EEOC-Initiated Litigation: 2022 Edition | 43 inherent discretion within the MAPS policy, genuine factual questions exist about how defendants arrived at [the comparator’s] salary.” 322 The employer lost at trial. On December 23, 2020, after the conclusion of a five-day bench trial, the court issued its conclusion that the employer had violated the EPA. 323 The EEOC easily met its burden to establish a prima facie case because the parties stipulated that the comparator’s salary was higher than that of each charging party. 324 The employer argued that each library branch differed with respect to circulation size, outreach efforts, and physical footprint, thus rendering the job duties of each library supervisor to dissimilar to support a finding that they performed equal work. The court found, however, that the core job duties were the same, relying in part on evidence that the positions shared the same job description and supervisors often substituted for one another on a short- or long-term basis without requiring any additional training and without any alternation in pay. 325 The differences among library branches did not defeat the EEOC’s case because “none of th[ose] differences translated into job duties that differed significantly from one another.” 326 The court also rejected the employer’s affirmative defense, holding that the evidence simply did not support the employer’s claim that the comparator was hired at a higher salary because he was able to negotiate a higher salary on the strength of his superior qualifications. According to the court, there was no evidence that the comparator had ever negotiated his salary. 327 The MAPS salary system also did not support the employer’s defense because, although that system permitted a salary adjustment, it does not alone independently justify paying a male employee a higher wage for performing the same work . 328 The employer’s own HR guidance actually cautioned city agencies to be careful when setting starting salaries to the MAPS midpoint in order to avoid “internal equity issues.” 329 Yet the employer had not been able to show that the employer had ever compared salaries to avoid those equity issues, and even failed to do so even after one of the charging party’s had complained about the disparity. 330 The employer’s failure to act on that complaint also led the court to reject the employer’s claim that it had acted in good faith, meaning that the court awarded the charging parties liquidated damages on top of their actual damages. 331 The court concluded that “implementation of a public pay system alone cannot justify pay disparity in the absence of any other justification,” and that “mere reliance on MAPS in combination with the record evidence, does not establish that [comparator] was hired based on a factor other than sex. ” 332 322 Id. at *7. See also EEOC v. George Washington Univ. , No. 17-CV-1978, 2019 WL 2028398, at *4 (D.D.C. May 8, 2019) (denying an employer’s motion to dismiss even though the complaint at issue did not explicitly allege how the positions at issue were equal with respect to skill, effort, and responsibility, holding that the complaint “straightforwardly pleads that [plaintiff] was paid less as Executive Assistant than [comparator] was paid as a Special Assistant for substantially the same job responsibilities”); EEOC v. Univ. of Miami , No. 19-CV-23131- Civ-Scola, 2019 WL 6497888, at *2 (S.D. Fla. Dec. 3, 2019) (denying a motion to dismiss claims brought by professors in the same department because the EEOC had supported its claims of pay discrimination with numerous allegations relating to the professors job duties, such as teaching classes and publishing books and articles, and allegations that the female professor had two more years of teaching experience and had published more works, and because the EEOC had alleged that both professors were in the same department and had been promoted to full professor at the same time after a review by the same committee based on the same criteria); EEOC v. Denton Cty. , No. 4:17-CV-614, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 175794, at *22 (E.D. Tex. Oct. 12, 2018) (denying cross motions for summary judgment, holding that it was “not convinced that [defendant] or the EEOC has met their respective burdens demonstrating that there is no material issue of fact as to the EEOC's claim for violation of the Equal Pay Act entitling it to judgment as a matter of law”). 323 EEOC v. Enoch Pratt Free Library , No. 8:17-CV-2860, 2020 WL 7640845 (D. Md. Dec. 23, 2020). 324 Id. at *8. 325 Id. at *9. 326 Id. (emphasis in original). 327 Id. at *10. 328 Id. 329 Id. 330 Id. 331 Id. 332 Id. at *11.