Court dismisses EPA case as push for pay equity intensifies.

When Congress passed the Equal Pay Act (EPA) in 1963, it was widely expected that the federal law would erase the pay gap between men and women. But in practice, that laudable goal has yet to be achieved. Part of the reason is that the EPA allows employers to justify compensation by showing that any factor other than sex was the reason for paying members of one sex less than members of another. Thus, pay differences can be justified by factors like experience, education, seniority or even salary history in some cases.

The few cases in which plaintiffs prevailed involved extremely similar jobs that tended to attract one sex. For example, cases involving nurse practitioners compared with physicians' assistants fit neatly into the EPA's formula for salary comparison. Historically, nursing has been a female-heavy profession. When advanced degree programs emerged for nurse practitioners, nurses enrolled.

Then programs producing physicians' assistants arrived on the scene. These programs enrolled many men.

Both professions are licensed to perform the same medical services, but the predominantly female nurse practitioners were routinely paid less than the largely male physicians' assistants.

To win an EPA case, the worker must show that the opposite sex was paid more for "equal work requiring substantially similar skill, effort and responsibilities performed under similar working conditions." That's increasingly difficult in a work environment where numerous new jobs rely on extremely specialized skills...

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