New Jersey May Soon Have Expanded Equal Pay Protections

As a follow up to yesterday’s post on the proposed changes to EEO-1 reports, the EEOC is not the only ones trying to increase efforts to combat gender pay inequity.

The New Jersey Legislature recently passed amendments to the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination that provide broader prohibitions on gender discriminatory pay practices. The bill rocketed through both the Senate and the Assembly and was almost unanimously passed in both houses.

The bill, as passed by the Legislature, greatly extends the possible statute of limitations for pay inequity claims. The proposed law adopts the Lily Ledbetter rule that each new pay period would be a new event of discrimination even if the discriminatory pay decision was made years prior. However, the New Jersey law goes farther and would allow employees to go back more than two years prior to the last pay period under either the discovery rule theory or the continuing violation theory.