After working her entire career at a Denver law school, Lucy Marsh discovered that she was one of the lowest paid professors in the school, despite being one of the most experienced. As a result, she filed a lawsuit against the school, which led to “years of litigation against the University of Denver's Sturm College of Law.” Fortunately for Marsh, the lawsuit finally ended on Thursday with a $2.6 million settlement for not only Marsh but for six other women as well.The pay discrepancies were discovered after Martin Katz, the law school's then-dean, wrote a memo in December of 2012 that discusses faculty raises. In the memo, “it showed female full professors' median salary was about $11,000 less than male counterparts and the average female professor made nearly $16,000 less than male full professors.”Even though the settlement was directed at bringing closure to the women involved in the lawsuit, Marsh and representatives with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) have high hopes that it will help bring about change throughout the halls of higher education when it comes to how female employees are paid. According to federal officials, the case demonstrated “the pervasiveness of lower pay for women, even affecting the law professors who were highly educated and considered experts in their field.”

Drawing of a female professor; image courtesy of PublicDomainPictures via Pixabay, www.pixabay.com

When discussing the case, Mary Jo O'Neil, a regional attorney for the EEOC said, “If unequal pay can happen to women in that position, you know it's happening to women in many other positions.”So how did the university respond to the settlement? For starters, it issued a statement saying that “fair, equitable and merit-based pay for faculty and staff is among the university's 'cornerstone commitments.'” It added:“While confident in our legal position, we were motivated to action by our strong desire to heal our community and move forward together. We believe this settlement will allow us to collectively focus on a present and a future in which the law school and the DU community as a whole can unite under our common values of equity, integrity, and opportunity.”According to the settlement, the university “must hire an outside economist to study faculty pay for at least five years and bulk up employee training on discrimination” Additionally, the law school is also required to “create a password-protected site listing Sturm College of Law faculty salaries, position, date of hire and demographic information.” Names won't be included on the site, but having all the other information available will foster transparency.Many of the women involved in the case, including Nancy Ehrenreich, believe transparency is needed. Ehrenreich has been a professor at the school for 29 years and said, “Our story illustrates that no group of women is immune from discrimination. Constant vigilance will be required to restore, or to cure, this kind of inequity.”

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Female Law Professors Hope Settlement Leads to ChangeLaw school reaches $2.6 million settlement in equal pay suit