Opinion ID: 4574284
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Equal Pay Act Discrimination Claim

Text: Smith contends that the district court erred by granting summary judgment to FAMU on her Equal Pay Act claim because the pay disparity in Smith I was not 10 USCA11 Case: 19-12560 Date Filed: 10/08/2020 Page: 11 of 18 carried forward, but rather, FAMU “reset” its salary formula through the 2016 onetime salary adjustment. And under FAMU’s “new” salary formula, she avers, she should be but is not being paid the same as Professor Brown. We disagree. Even though FAMU’s 2016 one-time adjustment “reset” some of its faculty member’s salaries, the current pay disparity between Smith and Brown is clearly attributable to the preexisting and benign disparity between them from Smith I. An employee establishes a prima facie case under the Equal Pay Act by showing that the employer paid differing wages to employees of opposite sexes for “equal work on jobs . . . which require[] equal skill, effort, and responsibility, and which are performed under similar working conditions.” 29 U.S.C. § 206(d)(1); see Steger v. Gen. Elec. Co., 318 F.3d 1066, 1077–78 (11th Cir. 2003). Once the employee has established a prima facie case, the employer may avoid liability by proving by a preponderance of the evidence that the payments were made pursuant to: (i) a seniority system; (ii) a merit system; (iii) a system which measures earnings by quantity or quality of production; or (iv) a differential based on any other factor other than sex: Provided, That an employer who is paying a wage rate differential in violation of this subsection shall not, in order to comply with the provisions of this subsection, reduce the wage rate of any employee. 29 U.S.C. § 206(d)(1) (emphasis in original). “The burden to prove these affirmative defenses is heavy and must demonstrate that ‘the factor of sex 11 USCA11 Case: 19-12560 Date Filed: 10/08/2020 Page: 12 of 18 provided no basis for the wage differential.’” Steger, 318 F.3d at 1078 (quoting Irby v. Bittick, 44 F.3d 949, 954 (11th Cir.1995)). The employee may then rebut the employer’s defense by putting forth evidence demonstrating that the employer’s alternative bases for the pay disparity were pretextual or offered as a post-event justification for a sex-based differential. Id. A district court’s factual finding that an employer has demonstrated that sex provided no basis for the pay disparity is reviewed for clear error. Id. Smith cannot establish a prima facie case of pay discrimination under the Equal Pay Act. Because Smith is collaterally estopped from asserting that the pay disparity between herself and Brown at the time of the Smith I verdict was discriminatory on the basis of sex,6 she may establish a prima facie case of discrimination in the instant case only upon showing that the current disparity was not simply carried forward. She cannot meet this burden. FAMU has made no changes to Brown’s or Smith’s salary that would suggest that the current disparity 6 Collateral estoppel, often referred to as issue preclusion, “precludes the relitigation of an issue that has already been litigated and resolved in a prior proceeding.” Pleming v. UniversalRundle Corp., 142 F.3d 1354, 1359 (11th Cir. 1998) (emphasis added). This type of preclusion differs from that imposed by the doctrine of res judicata, which bars the relitigation of entire claims. Id. at 1359. Here, the district court did not find, as Smith asserts it did, that her entire “gender pay claim was collaterally barred.” Rather, the district court appropriately applied collateral estoppel to preclude her from challenging a specific factual issue decided by the jury in her 2014 trial: whether FAMU’s disparate payment of salaries that occurred before the trial was motivated by gender discrimination. The district court nevertheless made clear that Smith was permitted to litigate the issue of whether any new action taken by FAMU after the resolution of Smith I was discriminatory. 12 USCA11 Case: 19-12560 Date Filed: 10/08/2020 Page: 13 of 18 between them is based on sex in any way. The 2016 one-time salary adjustment affected only a third of FAMU’s faculty members—but not Brown’s. And no evidence supports the notion that sex in any way contributed to that adjustment. Rather, the adjustment applied evenhandedly to both men and women. And the unequivocal testimony from those who engineered the one-time adjustment was that sex was never considered as a factor. Accordingly, we hold that Smith’s Equal Pay Act claim fails.7