Pay Equity & Legal Compliance Flashcards

California's Pay Data Reporting law (SB 973/SB 1162) requires private employers with 100+ employees to report pay data broken down by which categories?

Answer: Race/ethnicity and sex by EEO-1 job category

California's pay data reporting law requires employers to report median and mean hourly rates by race/ethnicity and sex within each EEO-1 job category.

When conducting a proactive pay equity audit, which approach is most effective at preserving attorney-client privilege over the findings?

Answer: Commissioning the audit through outside legal counsel under attorney work-product doctrine

Structuring the pay equity audit as work product under the direction of legal counsel helps protect sensitive findings from discovery in subsequent litigation.

An employer sets starting salaries for new hires based on their prior salary history. Under which legal framework is this practice most likely to be challenged?

Answer: State salary history ban laws

Over 20 states and localities have enacted salary history ban laws that prohibit employers from relying on prior pay to set new hire compensation, as this can perpetuate historical pay gaps.

What is the primary purpose of pay transparency laws that require employers to post salary ranges in job postings?

Answer: To empower candidates and employees to negotiate fairly and identify pay disparities

Pay transparency requirements in salary postings aim to reduce information asymmetry, enabling workers to negotiate informed and helping identify systemic inequities.

A compensation professional is calculating the adjusted pay gap. Which best describes the difference between the 'unadjusted' and 'adjusted' pay gap?

Answer: The unadjusted gap is the raw difference; the adjusted gap controls for legitimate factors like job level, tenure, and performance

The unadjusted (raw) gap reflects the overall difference in average pay, while the adjusted gap isolates unexplained differences after accounting for legitimate compensable factors.

Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, pay discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin applies to employers with how many employees?

Answer: 15 or more

Title VII covers employers with 15 or more employees, which is a lower threshold than many other federal employment laws.

Which of the following is an example of a 'factor other than sex' defense that courts have generally NOT accepted as a valid EPA affirmative defense?

Answer: Higher prior salary negotiated by the male employee

Following the Ninth Circuit's Rizo v. Yovanovitch decision, courts have increasingly rejected prior salary as a standalone 'factor other than sex' because it may perpetuate historical discrimination.