On Monday, April 9, 2018, the day before Equal Pay Day, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that employers cannot use an employee’s past salary to justify paying women less than men under the federal Equal Pay Act (EPA). The Ninth Circuit’s decision in Rizo v. Yovino overruled prior holdings in the circuit that past salary is a “factor other than sex” that employers could use to justify a pay gap between men and women under the EPA, concluding that prior salary cannot be used, alone or in combination with other factors, to justify a wage differential.
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