Law Schools

Law School Settles Lawsuit Over Unequal Pay... Again.

The details of this story seem awfully familiar.

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The University of Denver Sturm College of Law has settled its second pay discrimination lawsuit in as many years. The first lawsuit began when law professor Lucy Marsh discovered she was the lowest paid full-time faculty member at the school in 2013. That case eventually featured the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission finding a pattern of gender inequality dating back to at least the 1970s, then a bunch of female professors acted on the EEOC’s findings, before the $2.6 million settlement in May of 2018. Now, not even two years later, another pay gap lawsuit brought by another female law professor has settled.

The most recent one to settle was brought in June of 2019 by law professor Rashmi Goel. In her complaint Goel alleged that, despite being on staff since 2002, she was the  lowest paid of the law school’s 12 associate professors. The complaint quantified the alleged pay gap as between $40,000 and $50,000 less annually than others in her position with comparable experience.

According to Goel’s attorney, Charlotte Sweeney of Sweeney & Bechtold, the settlement will see Goel’s salary increase; give her a stipend for work with the law school’s Rocky Mountain Collective on Race, Place & Law; provide back pay; compensate her for emotional distress; and cover Goel’s attorney fees. As Law.com reports, the plaintiff seems pretty happy with the deal:

“I think it’s a great resolution for her,” said Sweeney following the Jan. 2 dismissal of the suit. “It gets her to a salary she should have been at anyway and it compensates her for the loss of salary over a period of years. Also, it recognizes that she’s doing additional work, far and above many of her colleagues, on this additional project and deserved compensation for it.”

The university provided the following statement on the settlement:

“A mutual agreement has been reached in this case allowing both parties to move forward” reads a university statement. “One of the University of Denver’s cornerstone commitments it to ensure that our academic community compensates faculty and staff fairly, equitably and based on merit. These are values that we hold in highest regard and seek, always, to model in our community.”

Sweeney is also hopeful that the resolution of this lawsuit — along with the consent decree in the first case — will lead to some real improvements at the law school:

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“Hopefully, this will put the law school on the right track,” Sweeney said. “In conjunction with the consent decree that was entered in the other case, there’s now a labor economist looking at them every year, and there’s a monitor who is supposed to be evaluating everything annually. This should get them turned in the right direction.”

Fingers crossed that all this oversight actually moves the needle.

headshotKathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

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