On May 9, 2019, Washington Governor Jay Inslee signed House Bill 1696, the state’s most recent pay equity legislation, which the bill claims is an “additional step towards gender equality.”
The Colorado General Assembly has passed legislation to strengthen the state’s pay equity requirements, prohibit employers from seeking salary history from job applicants, and require employers to post internal job openings and list salary ranges.
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) will require covered employers to file EEO-1 compensation data for both calendar years 2017 and 2018 by September 30, 2019.
A district court has ordered the EEOC to collect detailed data on employee compensation and hours worked from covered employers sorted by job category, pay band, race, ethnicity, and gender by September 30, 2019.
In an April 3, 2019 filing in the federal district court that had ordered reinstatement of EEO-1 pay data reporting requirements, the EEOC explained its inability to comply with the court’s ruling on its present timeline.
In 2017, legislatures in more than 40 U.S. jurisdictions considered over 100 bills intended to narrow the lingering pay gap. While only a handful of those proposals ultimately became law, this wave shows no signs of subsiding.
