Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964

Equal Pay Day 2016:  Where Are We 20 Years Later?

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Today marks the twentieth anniversary of “Equal Pay Day,” which the National Committee on Pay Equity launched as a public awareness event in 1996 to symbolize how far into the year women must work to earn what men earned in the previous year.  In more than 50 years since enactment of the federal Equal Pay Act (“EPA”) and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (“Title VII”), women have made significant progress in the workplace and now make up roughly half of the American workforce.  However, women working full time still earn, on average, 79 cents for every dollar earned by men, and this number has barely moved in over a decade.  That said, it is still not clear that employer bias is to blame for the gap that remains.  Indeed, the pay gap measures only the difference in average earnings between all men and all women; it is not a proxy for pay bias—i.e., the failure to pay women equal pay for equal work.  Eliminating pay bias is important, but focusing heavily on perceived employer bias obscures a much more complex web of factors contributing to the problem of pay differences between men and women.

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Orrick to Provide Testimony on EEOC’s Proposed Revisions to the EEO-1 Report

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On March 16, 2016 the EEOC will be holding hearings on its proposal  to expand the EEO-1 report to require employers to provide pay data. Orrick’s Gary Siniscalco was asked to address the hearing to provide employer views on this issue. Watch our Blog for ongoing developments on this issue and  new developments in the equal pay area as they continue to unfold. The text of Gary’s testimony before the EEOC will be as follows:

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Justice Scalia’s Employment Law Legacy

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On February 13, 2016, Justice Antonin Scalia, the anchor of the Court’s conservative wing for nearly three decades, passed away.  He leaves behind a distinguished legal career that involved experience in wide range of roles.  After graduating from Harvard Law School, Justice Scalia entered private practice and then became a law professor at the University of Virginia.  He served in the Nixon and Ford administrations, eventually becoming Assistant Attorney General.  Scalia then began his judicial ascension when President Ronald Reagan nominated him to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.  Soon thereafter, Reagan nominated Scalia to the Supreme Court to replace Justice William Rehnquist, whom Reagan had named to the Chief Justice position.  Scalia was unanimously confirmed.

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