{"id":3695,"date":"2018-11-28T10:53:37","date_gmt":"2018-11-28T15:53:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lindabury.com\/firm\/?p=3695"},"modified":"2025-02-24T13:25:25","modified_gmt":"2025-02-24T18:25:25","slug":"n-j-s-equal-pay-act-employers-beware","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lindabury.com\/firm\/insights\/n-j-s-equal-pay-act-employers-beware.html","title":{"rendered":"N.J.\u2019s Equal Pay Act: Employers Beware"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Originally published in the November 21, 2018 issue of ROI-NJ.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">According to statistics, women in New Jersey are paid 82 cents for every dollar paid to men. Until recently, New Jersey\u2019s pay equity protections mirrored those of the Federal Equal Pay Act of 1963, mandating equal pay for men and women performing \u201cequal work.\u201d Under these laws, pay disparities could only be justified if the differential was based on a bona fide seniority or merit system, or \u201cany factor other than sex,\u201d an exception that gave employers significant room to defend wage disparities by pointing to the applicant\u2019s pay history or other factors unrelated to gender.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">With the passage of the Diane B. Allen Equal Pay Act in March 2018, New Jersey now takes a more aggressive approach towards eradicating pay disparities. While principally aimed at the gender wage gap, the act applies to all protected classes, thereby paving the way for disparate wage claims on the basis of race, age and any other status protected by the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination. In addition, employees can point to higher rates being paid to counterparts outside the protected class who are engaged in \u201csubstantially similar work,\u201d as compared to the narrower \u201cequal work\u201d standard under prior law. \u201cSubstantially similar work\u201d will be viewed \u201cin light of the employees\u2019 skills, effort and responsibility.\u201d Because there are no regulations interpreting this ambiguous phrase, employers must look beyond mere job titles to all aspects of all positions to identify those that involve \u201csubstantially similar work.\u201d<\/p>\n<div class=\"read_more_link\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.lindabury.com\/firm\/insights\/n-j-s-equal-pay-act-employers-beware.html\"  title=\"Continue Reading N.J.\u2019s Equal Pay Act: Employers Beware\" class=\"more-link\">Continue Reading \u203a<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Originally published in the November 21, 2018 issue of ROI-NJ. According to statistics, women in New Jersey are paid 82 cents for every dollar paid to men. Until recently, New Jersey\u2019s pay equity protections mirrored those of the Federal Equal Pay Act of 1963, mandating equal pay for men and women performing \u201cequal work.\u201d Under [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[65,247,291],"tags":[],"coauthors":[296],"class_list":["post-3695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-insights","category-labor-employment-insights","category-gingeleskie"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>N.J.\u2019s Equal Pay Act: Employers Beware &#8212; November 28, 2018 &#8212; Lindabury, McCormick, Estabrook &amp; Cooper, P.C. 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According to statistics, women in New Jersey are paid 82 cents for every dollar paid to","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.lindabury.com\/firm\/insights\/n-j-s-equal-pay-act-employers-beware.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"N.J.\u2019s Equal Pay Act: Employers Beware &#8212; November 28, 2018 &#8212; Lindabury, McCormick, Estabrook &amp; Cooper, P.C. Firm News &amp; Events","og_description":"Originally published in the November 21, 2018 issue of ROI-NJ. According to statistics, women in New Jersey are paid 82 cents for every dollar paid to","og_url":"https:\/\/www.lindabury.com\/firm\/insights\/n-j-s-equal-pay-act-employers-beware.html","og_site_name":"Lindabury, McCormick, Estabrook &amp; Cooper, P.C. Firm News &amp; Events","article_published_time":"2018-11-28T15:53:37+00:00","article_modified_time":"2025-02-24T18:25:25+00:00","author":"Lisa Gingeleskie","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Lisa Gingeleskie","Est. reading time":"3 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.lindabury.com\/firm\/insights\/n-j-s-equal-pay-act-employers-beware.html","url":"https:\/\/www.lindabury.com\/firm\/insights\/n-j-s-equal-pay-act-employers-beware.html","name":"N.J.\u2019s Equal Pay Act: Employers Beware &#8212; November 28, 2018 &#8212; Lindabury, McCormick, Estabrook &amp; Cooper, P.C. 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