Fresno educator prevails after equal pay fight reaches U.S. Supreme Court
Fresno educator Aileen Rizo, who has fought an eight-year battle over equal pay, was ecstatic to learn that the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday chose to let a lower court ruling prevail in her favor.
The determination in that ruling was employers cannot use salary history as a reason for paying men more than women. “I was stunned,” Rizo said. “This journey has been such a long one.”
Rizo, a former math consultant for the Fresno County Office of Education, sued her employer in 2013 after discovering a recent hire was being paid $13,000 more than she was. The problem was the new male employee had less experience, less education and less seniority than she did.
When she asked someone in human resources to explain why, she was told his pay was based on his salary history.
“It just didn’t make any sense, especially when it came to equal pay laws,” she said. “It was not fair that he was going to be paid more than I was.”
The Equal Pay Act is a federal law passed more than 50 years ago that prohibits salary discrimination based on gender. But Rizo said that when women are historically paid less than men, they will never achieve equity in salary.
She sued the Fresno County Office of Education in federal court and her case was ultimately litigated before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, who ruled in her favor.
The appeals court found that employers cannot pay women less than men for the same work based on their previous salaries. By doing so, it allows workplaces to “capitalize on the persistence of the wage gap” and perpetuates the problem.
Office of Education response
Attorney Michael Woods, who defended the county, “respectfully disagreed” with the decision and vowed to petition the U.S. Supreme Court to review the decision.
On Thursday, the Supreme Court declined to review the appeals court’s ruling, essentially allowing the existing decision to stand.
Still left to be resolved is whether the county will attempt to settle Rizo’s lawsuit, or whether it will let a federal court judge decide what she may be entitled to.
Jim Yovino, the Fresno County Superintendent of Schools, issued a statement Thursday. “Now that the petition before the Supreme Court has been denied and the case has been sent back to the local court, we look forward to resolving this case. As always, we will continue to focus on serving the children of Fresno County,” he said.
Rizo, who now works for a nonprofit educational organization, said there were times she thought the litigation was never going to end. She had never done anything like this before. But she persisted.
“You feel so intimidated sometimes, but every step of the way more people told me this was happening to them,” she said. “So I knew there was not going to be any changes unless there was someone who could take it to the end.”
Rizo is hopeful employers will now be more mindful of how they are calculating their employees salary.
In 2015, California changed its laws so that employers can’t use a person’s salary history in determining their starting salary. A total of 18 states bar employers from using prior salary information to set a new salary.
The county’s attorney has denied the organization has been unfair to woman.
“We remain confident that the policy of determining salaries by the Fresno County Superintendent of Schools, which was in effect through December 31, 2015, was absolutely gender-neutral, objective and effective in attracting qualified applicants and complied with all applicable laws,” he said in a 2018 statement.
This story was originally published July 2, 2020 at 6:25 PM.
