The 1963 passage of the Equal Pay Act (EPA)1 did not remove Louisiana from its usual place near the bottom of the states in terms of gender pay equality. There is no administrative exhaustion requirement to filing a private lawsuit, but it must be initiated within 2 years (3 for a willful violation). Available relief includes backpay, injunctions, liquidated damages, attorney’s fees, and costs. The EEOC can enforce this law, and an unequal pay claim might also be pursued under other federal laws such as Title VII.
The EPA requires that men and women doing “equal work on jobs the performance of which requires equal skill, effort, and responsibility, and which are performed under similar working conditions, be compensated with equal pay and benefits.” It covers most of the same employers as FLSA, and more employees, but the law is strictly applied.
To establish a prima facie case under the Equal Pay Act, an employee must establish by a preponderance of the evidence that the employees being compared are working in the same place, doing equal work, and receiving less pay than employees of the opposite sex. Equal work is work that entails “substantially” equal level of skill, effort, or responsibility and is performed under similar conditions; job titles or descriptions do not control. To prevail, a plaintiff would need to show that any non-discriminatory reason advanced by the employer for the difference in pay is pretextual.
- 129 U.S.C. § 206(d).