Recent Ninth Circuit Equal Pay Act Decision A Reminder To Examine and Eliminate Gender-Based Pay Disparity (US) Tuesday, March 16, 2021 On Monday, March 15, 2021, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed, in part, a district court’s order denying a federal Equal Pay Act (“EPA”) claim filed by a former University of Oregon tenured psychology professor who claimed she was paid significantly less than her male colleagues. The decision serves as a reminder to employers to critically evaluate the compensation of male and female employees performing similar duties, even those performing unique and highly specialized duties like teaching and research. Professor Jennifer Joy Freyd, a Stanford- and Cornell-educated full tenured psychology professor specializing in trauma studies, taught students, oversaw a research lab, edited one of the foremost journals in her field, and served on numerous University committees. She had little interest in leaving the University, despite “initial probes” from other universities that she received about once per year, because her husband also worked at the University and they were raising their children in the area. She also had worked hard to build her own research lab and to procure private donors to support her research in trauma studies. Many of her peers also were courted to leave the University and teach elsewhere. When they were wooed in this manner, the University of Oregon had a practice of granting “retention raises” to faculty as an incentive to remain at the University. As a result of Prof. Freyd’s disinterest in leaving the University, she had no reason to engage in, and the University was disincentivized from initiating, discussions about awarding her a retention raise. She also came to believe that when her women peers engaged in retention raise negotiations with the University, they were less likely to obtain a raise at all, and when they did, the raises were significantly smaller than those negotiated by their male peers.