Court: Restudy scope of Equal Pay Act

Richard Carelli

Tuesday, Jan. 18, 2000 | 11:02 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- In a surprising move, the Supreme Court today ordered lower courts to restudy rulings that said states and their agencies must abide by a 1963 federal law requiring employers to give men and women equal pay for equal work.

The court, issuing brief orders in cases from Illinois and New York, said those rulings should be reconsidered in light of its decision last week that said state employees are not protected by a federal law banning age bias.

Today's orders are surprising because last week's decision emphasized that age bias is not subject to the same level of judicial scrutiny as race and gender bias.

In other cases acted upon today, the court:

The justices, without comment, rejected the appeal in which retired teacher Judith Koenick said the law violates the constitutionally required separation of church and state. Thirteen states designate Good Friday as a legal holiday but only three -- Maryland, Illinois and North Dakota -- require all public schools to close on Good Friday. A federal appeals court has struck down the Illinois law.

A challenge to Indiana's Good Friday law is pending before the justices, who have not yet said whether they will fully review that dispute. The four-day holiday around Easter is supported by a pragmatic, legitimate secular purpose," the appeals court ruled last August.

That purpose, it said, is to avoid the anticipated high absenteeism among teachers and students on the days surrounding Easter, the holiest of Christian holidays.

In one of the Equal Pay cases acted on today, Illinois State University officials sought to get out from under a 1995 class-action lawsuit that accuses the school in Normal, Ill., of paying its female professors less than their male colleagues.

School officials contend the federal Equal Pay Act, when applied to state employees, violates states' 11th Amendment immunity from being sued in federal courts.

The lawsuit, filed by professors Iris Varner, Teresa Palmer and Paula Pomerenke, also accused Illinois State of violating a federal anti-bias law known as Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. That law, and that part of the lawsuit, was not at issue in the appeal acted on today.

A federal trial judge and the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the university's contention that it could not be sued under the Equal Pay Act. The school's lawyers argued that Congress lacked the authority, and never intended, to make the law nullify states' 11th Amendment immunity.

The university officials contend that state employees invoking the federal law must sue in state courts.

In the second case, officials at the State University of New York at New Paltz are trying to escape an Equal Pay Act lawsuit by Dr. Janice W. Anderson, a tenured associate professor in the school's communications and media department.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the school and said Anderson could invoke the federal law because Congress had wiped out New York's 11th Amendment immunity in such cases.