Opinion ID: 480204
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Discrimination in Pay

Text: 20 A plaintiff who alleges pay discrimination under Title VII is entitled to recover back pay for a period beginning not more than two years before the filing of the EEOC claim. Sellers v. Delgado College, 781 F.2d 503, 505 (5th Cir.1986). The Title VII plaintiff need not necessarily prove that she performed work equal to that of her better paid male colleague. County of Washington v. Gunther, 452 U.S. 161, 101 S.Ct. 2242, 2248-49, 68 L.Ed.2d 751 (1981); Plemer v. Parsons-Gilbane, 713 F.2d 1127, 1132 (5th Cir.1983). Of course, such a disparity, if inadequately explained by the defendant, would usually be weighty evidence of discrimination forbidden by Title VII, 42 U.S.C. Sec. 2000e-2(a)(1). If plaintiff does not establish that she performed comparable work, we hesitate to mandate a finding of intentional discrimination on the basis of the pay differential alone in the absence of evidence of the type adduced in Gunther and Wilkins v. University of Houston, 654 F.2d 388 (5th Cir.1981), cert. denied, 459 U.S. 822, 103 S.Ct. 51, 74 L.Ed.2d 57 (1982), where it was shown that the employers unexplainedly departed from objective pay criteria they had adopted. Plemer, 713 F.2d at 1133-34. In this case, Judge Fish found that Merrill had not shown that the duties that she was performing were comparable to those of the male members of the faculty against whom she is comparing herself. Merrill also did not suggest that SMU failed to abide by preannounced (or otherwise adopted) objective pay criteria. Instead, she relied on the charts and tables discussed earlier. Those materials did indicate that SMU paid Merrill less than her male colleagues, but in most instances her statistics did not account for the many neutral factors that operate simultaneously to influence the amount of salary a faculty member receives. Wilkins, 654 F.2d at 402; see Plemer, 713 F.2d at 1137-38. These factors include quality of prior experience, education, length of service, and professional achievements. See Wilkins, 654 F.2d at 402; Plemer, 713 F.2d at 1138. A few of Merrill's charts included information on some of these factors--such as education and years of experience--but even here, the statistical picture was incomplete. For example, one chart showed Merrill with many more years experience teaching in higher education than some of her male colleagues who were paid more. But the chart did not disclose where the prior teaching occurred. It might be reasonable for a university to consider five years of teaching at a prominent university with a graduate program, surrounded by challenging and accomplished faculty colleagues, more valuable than twice as much experience at a vastly smaller, obscure institution without such a program. Taken as a whole, Merrill's statistical proof failed fully to account for these factors, and so, on this record, did not require the district court to find in her favor on her wage discrimination claim. 21 We recognize that these evidentiary standards may mark a challenging course for a claimant like Merrill. But if we do not adhere to them, we will risk substituting our uninformed judgment for the employer's essentially subjective assessment of the value of the differing duties and responsibilities of various academic positions. See Plemer, 713 F.2d at 1134. In this case, the district court found Merrill's statistical compilations unreliable and found also that she failed to show she was performing comparable work. We cannot say these findings were clearly erroneous. There was no other evidence from which to infer that Merrill's low salary was caused by intentional sex discrimination.