According to a Pew analysis in 2017, women earned 82 percent of what men earned, meaning it would take an extra 47 days of work for women to earn what men did.
On March 4, 2019, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia vacated the Office of Management and Budget’s (“OMB”) stay of the Obama-era Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s (“EEOC”) EEO-1 reporting requirements that required companies to report pay data by race and gender. The Court ordered into effect the revised EEO-1 which requires private employers with 100 or more employees, and federal contractors with 50 or more employees, to report on workers’ W-2 earnings and hours worked—in addition to the sex, race, ethnicity, and job category data already being collected.
In November 2017, the National Women’s Law Center and the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement and Democracy Forward (“Plaintiffs”), sued the OMB over its stay of the revised EEO-1. The Court granted the Plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment finding that the stay was arbitrary and capricious, that the OMB failed to follow its own regulations in implementing the stay, and that the decision to stay the pay data collection “totally lacked the reasoned explanation” required.
The Plaintiffs claimed the government had significantly hampered their ability to pinpoint pay inequities and use data and analysis to advocate on behalf of women and minorities.
On the heels of this decision, and on International Women’s Day, March 8, 2019, the 28 members of the current women’s player pool filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Soccer Federation in the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles under the Equal Pay Act and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
The players allege ongoing “institutionalized gender discrimination” that includes unequal pay with their counterparts on the men’s national team. According to the lawsuit, “[a] comparison of the WNT and MNT pay shows that if each team played 20 friendlies in a year and each team won all 20 friendlies, female WNT players would earn a maximum of $99,000 or $4,950 per game, while similarly situated male MNT players would earn an average of $263,320 or $13,166 per game against the various levels of competition they would face…” It concludes that a top-tier women’s player would only make 38 percent of a similarly situated men’s player.
We’re in the age of the MeToo movement and seeing a heightened attention to pay equity issues. Employers should review, revise, and enforce their EEO policies.
