Federal appeals court recently ruled that an employees salary history is insufficient to justify pay differences between male and female employees. The Equal Pay Act, adopted in 1963, requires employers to pay men and women the same salary for equal work, but it does provide four exceptions: a seniority system, a merit system, a system that measures earnings by quantity or quality of production and a differential based on any other factor other than sex. The recent decision, which only applies to nine western states, overruled a 1982 case that allowed employers to base a pay differential on an employees prior salary history.
