Law professor Lucy Marsh filed a charge of gender discrimination with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) on Tuesday, The Denver Post is reporting.
Marsh claims the university violated the Equal Pay Act by paying her less than a man in the same position and did not correct the imbalance after they were made aware of it.
“Professor Marsh believes that she and other female professors at the Law School were discriminated against with respect to compensation because of their gender, and were paid less than men performing substantially equal work under similar conditions in the same establishment,” the filing with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission says.
University spokespersons have declined to comment on the case.
Marsh claims that she is the lowest-paid faculty member at the Sturm College of Law, receiving $109,000 annually according to the filing with the EEOC. The median salary for full time professors is $149,000.
According to the documents filed by Marsh, she scheduled a meeting January 30 of this year with Law School Dean Martin Katz to discuss the discrepancy after a memo regarding fund allocation for pay raises sent out by Katz in December furthered her concerns. The memo included a “short note on salary equity” which showed that “the median salary for female Full Professors was $7,532/year less than that for males before this round of raises and $11,282/year less than that for males after this round of raises.”
It was at the meeting with Katz that Marsh learned she is the lowest-paid full professor at the Sturm College of Law.
“What I hope comes out of this is not just fair compensation to professor Marsh and to fix the system, but hopefully there will be lessons learned that other universities, law schools and employers can look at and say, ‘This is something that we can look at, to make sure the women are not paid less for equal work,’” Jennifer Reisch, one of Marsh’s lawyers and legal director of the national organization Equal Rights Advocates, told the Denver Post.
Marsh has been teaching at the law school for forty years, working as a full professor for 31 of those years. In that time, she has been recognized with the Outstanding Teacher Award and Excellence in Teaching Award. She recently created the Tribal Wills Project, (LINK) where students were given the opportunity to write wills in Southern Ute and Ute Mountain reservations in the state.
