UT Law Prof Says Male Counterparts Exempt from Performance Review, Still Get Raises, in Equal Pay Lawsuit

By Danielle Toth | October 29, 2021

Category: Labor & Employment

UT Law Equal Pay Lawsuit Overview:

Who: A University of Texas (UT) law professor responded to a motion to dismiss her equal pay lawsuit.
Why: The plaintiff alleges UT pays her significantly less than her male colleagues with similar job duties.
Where: The lawsuit is pending in Texas federal court.

The University of Texas (UT) law school has paid a male professor that it admits performs work requiring the same skill, effort and responsibility, $237,000 more than a female professor since at least 2016, the plaintiff in an equal pay lawsuit lodged against the institution alleges.

Plaintiff Linda Mullenix responded to UT’s motion seeking summary judgment on her claims of pay discrimination by saying the defendant claims her compensation is derived from a “careful process of merit-based peer review by the Law School’s Budget Committee,” but the evidence shows the opposite.

“The evidence shows that budget committee members do not agree on the standards to be applied or the metrics to be used,” Mullenix states in her response. “They do not agree

on what makes good scholarship or what scholarship even is. They do not agree on service or the weight to give good or bad teaching.”

She also notes that evidence shows that since 2015, up to a third of the UT Law faculty have been exempted from any performance evaluations while still receiving five-figure raises.

“That is not a merit-based system,” Mullenix says. “That is not a factor other than sex. Instead, it is a violation of the [Equal Pay Act] and Title VII.”

UT Law Claims Women Only Need to Be Paid on Average the Same As Men

Professor Mullenix currently holds the Rita and Morris Atlas Chair in Advocacy at the University of Texas School of Law, where she has been teaching since 1991. She has numerous professional accomplishments, awards and publications, yet other tenured law faculty, who are paid more than Professor Mullenix, have similar or lesser job responsibilities, Mullenix claims in her response.

She also states that UT does not dispute that Professors Bone, McGarity, and Westbrook, all male professors, are proper comparators and has admitted conclusively during discovery that Professor Bone is a proper comparator and is paid more than Professor Mullenix.

However, UT claims, the Equal Pay Act merely requires that women only be paid on average the same as men.

“If accepted, Defendant’s argument would essentially nullify the EPA by allowing an employer to pay women less than men deliberately and intentionally for equal work as long as at least one man was paid sufficiently less to skew the average,” the response states. “ … This subversion of the purpose of the EPA has already been rejected by courts in the Fifth Circuit and this very district.”

Mullenix has asked the court to deny the defendant’s motion for summary judgment and to grant her motion for summary judgment, and for such other and further relief to which she may be entitled.

Employers have been hit with legal action alleging toxic and sexist workplaces, including Activision Blizzard and L Brands — the parent company of Victoria’s Secret, Bath & Body Works, and Pink.

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The plaintiffs are represented by Colin Walsh and Jairo Castellanos of Wiley Walsh PC and Paige Elizabeth Melendez of Rob Wiley PC.

The UT Equal Pay Lawsuit is Mullenix v. University of Texas at Austin, Case No. 1:19-cv-01203, in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas.