Opinion ID: 351700
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Interrelationship of the Statutes

Text: 39 NWA argues that the two statutes, read in pari materia, do not authorize monetary relief premised upon both legislative schemes for the same act of paying disparate wages. It is said that while the Equal Pay Act permits a statutory class action to secure equal pay for equal work by employees of different sexes, 92 Title VII's guaranty of nondiscriminatory compensation applies only to such minority groups as are not covered by the Equal Pay Act. 40 NWA further contends that the District Court was inconsistent in finding transgressions of both statutes. The argument in this connection may be summarized briefly. If the purser and stewardess jobs are equal, and thus support the court's holding of an Equal Pay Act violation, the company's refusal to permit women to become pursers does not deprive them of advancement opportunities because the jobs are equal and thus there can be no encroachment upon Title VII. Conversely, if the purser job is superior, there is no infringement of the Equal Pay Act although access to that position has unlawfully been denied to women under Title VII. NWA does not challenge the court's finding that Title VII was dishonored by the exclusion of female employees from the purser position, but the company does contest the conclusion that the comparability of that position and the stewardess position brings the salary differential between pursers and stewardesses into collision with the Equal Pay Act. 41 We reject these approaches. The District Court's finding that NWA's purser and stewardess jobs are essentially equal in duties and responsibilities is not logically inconsistent with the court's conclusions that NWA impinged on Title VII by blocking the entry of women into the purser category. Although, as the District Court determined, the two jobs require equal skill, effort, and responsibility so as to command equivalent salaries under the Equal Pay Act, any statutorily-unexempted sex-based barrier to obtaining a particular job is forbidden by Title VII. Among the options withheld by Title VII from an employer are those which limit . . . or classify his employees or applicants for employment in any way which would deprive or tend to deprive any individual of employment opportunities . . . because of such individual's . . . sex . . . . 93 Notwithstanding, NWA classified its cabin attendants more prominently as all-female stewardesses and all-male pursers, and barred women applicants from the ranks of the latter though capable through existing employment and accrued experience with NWA to meet all of its purser-criteria save sex. That plainly was outlawed by Title VII as a sex-founded deprivation of employment opportunities, not the least of which were the superior emoluments which NWA bestowed on the purser position. 94 42 Nor do we doubt that the same set of facts may form the basis for redress under both Title VII and the Equal Pay Act if the requirements of each are separately satisfied and the claimant does not reap overlapping relief for the same wrong. Unless foreclosed by the statutory language or history, nothing to rob aggrieved parties of the freedom to select among multiple remedies for separate though concurrent statutory violations is apparent. 43 Title VII rights are independent of the rights created by other statutes, and where remedies coincide the claimant should be allowed to utilize whichever avenue of relief is desired. 95 This would seem to be the clearer for claimants under Title VII which, as the Supreme Court held in Alexander v. Gardner-Denver, 96 was intended to supplement, rather than supplant, existing laws . . . relating to employment. 97 The Court has also noted that the legislative history of Title VII manifests a congressional intent to allow an individual to pursue independently his rights under Title VII and other applicable state and federal statutes. 98 During the pre-enactment debates, Congress rejected a proposed amendment which would have made Title VII the exclusive remedy for the unlawful employment practices it covers, and thereby evinced a congressional purpose to leave open other modes of relief available to victims of discriminatory employment practices. 99 44 Although Title VII reaches farther than the Equal Pay Act to protect groups other than those sex-based classes and to proscribe discrimination in many facets of employment additional to compensation, nowhere have we encountered an indication that Title VII was intended either to supplant or be supplanted by the Equal Pay Act in the relatively small area in which the two are congruent. On the contrary, we are satisfied that the provisions of both acts should be read in pari materia, and neither should be interpreted in a manner that would undermine the other. 100 In Orr v. Frank R. MacNeill & Son, Inc., 101 the Fifth Circuit declared that (t)he sex discrimination provision of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 must be construed in harmony with the Equal Pay Act of 1963. 102 We agree, and we now so hold. 45 Moreover, the language of Title VII itself explicitly declares that it is unlawful for an employer to offer an employee discriminatory compensation . . . because of such individual's . . . sex. 103 The legislative history of Title VII yields no hint that the guaranty of nondiscriminatory compensation was extended only to minority groups not embraced within the Equal Pay Act. Indeed, Title VII refers specifically to the Equal Pay Act and states that a sex-predicated wage differential is immune from attack under Title VII only if it comes within one of the four enumerated exceptions to the Equal Pay Act. 104 This, then, focuses our inquiry once again upon whether the District Court correctly found that the employee-litigants had overcome the factors urged by NWA as proof that the stewardess and purser jobs were unequal, or whether NWA had sustained an affirmative defense under one of the Equal Pay Act's exceptions permitting limited instances of disparate pay for equal work.