Court: Women can’t earn less than men based on past wages

SAN FRANCISCO — Employers should not base a new worker’s pay on past salary because that could exacerbate unequal pay between men and women, a federal appeals court decided Monday.

An 11-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, overturning last year’s decision by a threejudge panel, ruled unanimously in favor of a female math consultant from Fresno who was paid less than men for equal work because her prior salary was lower. “Allowing an employer to justify a wage differential between men and women on the basis of prior salary is wholly inconsistent with the provisions of the Equal Pay Act,” Judge Stephen Reinhardt, who died last month, had written for the court.

Despite passage of the federal pay law in 1963, “the financial exploitation of working women embodied by the gender pay gap continues to be an embarrassing reality of our economy,” Reinhardt wrote.

The ruling came in a lawsuit brought by Aileen Rizo, a math consultant, against the Fresno County Superintendent of Schools.

Rizo sued after finding that the other math consultants, who were men, were paid more than her.

The school system conceded Rizo was paid less but attributed the disparity to the men’s pay history, not discrimination.

Monday’s decision applies to nine Western states.

In the U.S., women earn an average of 82 cents for every dollar paid to men, according to the latest Pew Research Center analysis of median hourly earnings. Massachusetts and California have passed laws that block managers from requesting an applicant’s prior salary.