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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Salary History And The Equal Pay Act: An Argument For The Adoption Of “Reckless Discrimination” As A Theory Of Liability, Kate Vandenberg Jan 2020

Salary History And The Equal Pay Act: An Argument For The Adoption Of “Reckless Discrimination” As A Theory Of Liability, Kate Vandenberg

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

The Equal Pay Act (EPA) purports to prohibit employers from paying female employees less than male employees with similar qualifications; however, the affirmative defenses provided in the EPA are loopholes that perpetuate the gender pay gap. In particular, the fourth affirmative defense allows for wage differentials based on a “factor other than sex.” Many federal circuits have read this defense broadly to include wage differentials based on salary history. That is, an employer can pay a female employee less than her male counterparts because she was paid less by her previous employer. While salary history was once viewed as an …


Soul Of A Woman: The Sex Stereotyping Prohibition At Work, Kimberly A. Yuracko Jan 2012

Soul Of A Woman: The Sex Stereotyping Prohibition At Work, Kimberly A. Yuracko

Faculty Working Papers

In 1989 the Supreme Court in Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins declared that sex stereotyping was a prohibited from of sex discrimination at work. This seemingly simple declaration has been the most important development in sex discrimination jurisprudence since the passage of Title VII. It has been used to extend the Act's coverage and protect groups that were previously excluded. Astonishingly, however, the contours, dimensions and requirements of the prohibition have never been clearly articulated by courts or scholars. In this paper I evaluate four interpretations of what the sex stereotyping prohibition might mean in order to determine what it actually …


A Moral Contractual Approach To Labor Law Reform: A Template For Using Ethical Principles To Regulate Behavior Where Law Failed To Do So Effectively, Zev J. Eigen, David S. Sherwyn Jan 2011

A Moral Contractual Approach To Labor Law Reform: A Template For Using Ethical Principles To Regulate Behavior Where Law Failed To Do So Effectively, Zev J. Eigen, David S. Sherwyn

Faculty Working Papers

If laws cease to work as they should or as intended, legislators and scholars propose new laws to replace or amend them. This paper posits an alternative—offering regulated parties the opportunity to contractually bind themselves to behave ethically. The perfect test-case for this proposal is labor law, because (1) labor law has not been amended for decades, (2) proposals to amend it have failed for political reasons, and are focused on union election win rates, and less on the election process itself, (3) it is an area of law already statutorily regulating parties' reciprocal contractual obligations, and (4) moral means …