The Equal Pay Act of 1963
The Equal Pay Act of 1963 requires that men and women be paid equally for equal work in the same workplace. The jobs being compared do not have to be identical — they have to be substantially equal in the skill, effort, and responsibility they require, performed under similar conditions.
Pay differences are not automatically illegal. An employer can justify a gap with a seniority system, a merit system, a system that measures quantity or quality of output, or any other factor that is not based on sex. What an employer cannot do is pay one sex less for the same work without one of those legitimate reasons.
There is an important wrinkle in how violations get fixed: an employer cannot close an illegal gap by cutting the higher-paid worker’s wages. It must raise the pay of the underpaid worker.
The Equal Pay Act is part of the Fair Labor Standards Act and is enforced by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). It works alongside Title VII, which also bars sex-based pay discrimination — giving workers more than one path to challenge unequal pay.
Key Points
- Requires equal pay for jobs that require substantially equal skill, effort, and responsibility under similar conditions.
- Applies regardless of sex — pay differences must be justified by seniority, merit, output, or another non-sex factor.
- An employer cannot lower anyone's pay to fix an illegal gap — it must raise the underpaid worker's.
- Part of the Fair Labor Standards Act and enforced by the EEOC.
Leading Cases
- Corning Glass Works v. Brennan (1974) — An employer could not pay men more for the same work simply because the higher rate had been set in the past.
Read the Official Source
Equal Pay Act (Cornell Law) →Confused by the legal wording? The CivicShield app explains the law in everyday language for your exact situation.
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