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The Shifting Sands Of Employment Discrimination: From Unjustified Impact To Disparate Treatment In Pregnancy And Pay, Deborah L. Brake
The Shifting Sands Of Employment Discrimination: From Unjustified Impact To Disparate Treatment In Pregnancy And Pay, Deborah L. Brake
Articles
In 2015, the Supreme Court decided its first major pregnancy discrimination case in nearly a quarter century. The Court’s decision in Young v. United Parcel Service, Inc., made a startling move: despite over four decades of Supreme Court case law roping off disparate treatment and disparate impact into discrete and separate categories, the Court crafted a pregnancy discrimination claim that permits an unjustified impact on pregnant workers to support the inference of discriminatory intent necessary to prevail on a disparate treatment claim. The decision cuts against the grain of established employment discrimination law by blurring the impact/treatment boundary and …
Reviving Paycheck Fairness: Why And How The Factor-Other-Than-Sex Defense Matters, Deborah L. Brake
Reviving Paycheck Fairness: Why And How The Factor-Other-Than-Sex Defense Matters, Deborah L. Brake
Articles
Ever since the Supreme Court’s short-lived decision in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire Company, the equal pay movement has coalesced around the Paycheck Fairness Act as the legal reform strategy for addressing the gender wage gap. The centerpiece of the Act would tighten the Factor Other Than Sex defense (FOTS) to require the employer’s sex-neutral factor to be bona fide, job-related for the position in question, and consistent with business necessity. Even without the Paycheck Fairness Act, some recent lower court decisions have interpreted the existing Equal Pay Act to set limits on the nondiscriminatory factors that can satisfy the …