Bennett & Belfort Attorney Zak Hammond spoke to Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly in a summary judgment decision permitting a claim under the Massachusetts Equal Pay Act to proceed to trial.
In Maher v. City of Cambridge, a building projects coordinator sued under the Massachusetts Equal Pay Act alleging that she performed comparable job duties to her higher-paid male colleagues who held the title of construction project manager.
In the decision, the Superior Court held that a reasonable jury could indeed find the plaintiff’s job to be comparable to the jobs held by her higher-paid male colleagues. However, in so holding, the Court quoted from a 1997 Supreme Judicial Court decision, Jancey v. School Committee of Everett, which defined the term “comparable work” differently from the definition used in the current iteration of the Massachusetts Equal Pay Act.
Jancey stated that in determining whether jobs were comparable, the Court must first analyze “whether the substantive content of the jobs is comparable, that is, whether the duties of the jobs have ‘important common characteristics.’” In 2017, the Legislature amended the Massachusetts Equal Pay Act, G.L. c. 149, § 105A, to define “comparable work” as work that “requires substantially similar skill, effort, and responsibility, and is performed under similar working conditions,” lessening the focus on analyzing the specific duties. The result is that the current iteration of MEPA is far more expansive than under Jancey.
Hammond noted that there was risk associated from continuing to reference Jancey, even in otherwise well-reasoned decisions. “Continuing to apply the Jancey test could easily result in an inappropriate focus on the content of the positions being compared versus a focus on the skills, effort, responsibility and similarity of working conditions,” Attorney Hammond told Lawyers Weekly.
