By Kaylan Kha

Editor in Chief

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that employers are not allowed to pay women less than men based on their previous salaries on April 9. The case, called Rizo v. County Office of Education, was awarded in favor of the plaintiff, Fresno County Office of Education math consultant Aileen Rizo.

The 11-judge panel made their decision on the basis that prior salary should not be a factor in determining one’s current salary as a violation of the Equal Pay Act.

As part of President John F. Kennedy’s New Frontier Program, the Equal Pay Act was enacted in 1963. The law prevented employers from discriminating between men and women through wage disparity and required women to be paid the same amount as men for “equal work on jobs the performance of which requires equal skill, effort, and responsibility.”

Rizo filed a lawsuit against Superintendent Jim Yovino in 2012 after discovering that her male co-workers, who had less seniority than her, were making a significant amount more than she was.

Her case was first heard in 2017, when a three-judge panel ruled in favor of the County, withholding the 1982 ruling that allowed prior wages to be considered “a factor other than sex.”

States like California, Massachusetts, and Oregon have already passed laws banning the use of salary history as a way of determining current pay.

With this new ruling, USC law professor Lisa Klerman told KPCC, “It will be very difficult for the employer now to be able to say that prior salary history was a justifiable basis for a gender wage gap.”

Despite efforts to close the wage gap between men and women through banning discriminatory factors, it still exists. This ruling that prevents salary history from being used as a discriminatory factor has placed the United States one step closer to abolishing the wage gap.

A study conducted by the Pew Research Center showed that women, on average, earned 82 percent of what men earned in 2017. An extra 47 days of work would be required to close that wage disparity.

In 2016, women were paid 80 percent less than men, according to the Institute for Women’s Policy and Research (IWPR). The IWPR also reported that the wage gap is wider for women of color, with African American women earning 63 percent and Latina women earning 54 percent of what men earn.