Opinion ID: 507108
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Salary claims of employees subject to the pre-merger

Text: 10 discriminatory pay structure 11 Initially, in reviewing our decision, the Court noted a fundamental flaw in that portion of the panel majority's opinion relating to the plaintiffs' salary discrimination claims. The Court held that there is a duty on the part of an employer to eliminate any salary disparity between black and white employees that is directly traceable to pre-Act discriminatory policies. 106 S.Ct. at 3006. Thus, since the Extension Service, prior to 1965, admittedly maintained two separate, racially-segregated Extension Service branches for its employees and paid black employees less than their white counterparts, the Extension Service had an obligation to remedy any salary disparities that lingered on. This the Extension Service did not do, and accordingly its inaction constituted discrimination on account of race. For, as the Supreme Court noted, [e]ach week's pay check that deliver[ed] less to a black than to a similarly situated white is a wrong actionable under Title VII, regardless of the fact that this pattern was begun prior to the effective date of Title VII. 106 S.Ct. at 3006-07. In light of the Extension Service's earlier admission that it had not made all the adjustments necessary to remedy all disparities originating with the pre-Act racially-segregated pay scales, we think it is clear that the district court's finding on this question is erroneous, as was our own, since those decisions were induced by an erroneous view of the controlling legal standard.... Miller v. Mercy Hospital, Inc., 720 F.2d 356, 361 (4th Cir.1983), citing United States v. Singer Manufacturing Co., 374 U.S. 174, 194 n. 9, 83 S.Ct. 1773, 1784 n. 9, 10 L.Ed.2d 823 (1963); MacMullen v. North Carolina Electric & Gas Co., 312 F.2d 662, 670 (4th Cir.1963). Such mistakes of fact may be corrected as a matter of law. Singer, supra, 374 U.S. at 194, n. 9, 83 S.Ct. at 1784 n. 9. Accordingly, on remand, the district court will grant relief to those employees hired prior to August 1, 1965 and will determine when, if at all, the Extension Service's continuing wage discrimination stopped. It will award those employees hired prior to August 1, 1965, the date on which the black and white branches were merged, appropriate relief subject, of course, to the applicable statute of limitation. 9 For it is only this group of employees affected by the continuing effects of the Extension Service's pre-Act dual pay system.