On Thursday, May 17, the lawsuit between seven female law professors and DU’s Sturm College of Law reached a $2.6 million legal settlement. The lawsuit began in 2013 when Lucy Marsh filed a complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commision (EEOC) that she was being paid thousands of dollars less than her male colleagues. The commission found in favor of Marsh, stating that in October 2013, the average salary for female full-time law professors at DU was $139,940, while men earned an average $159,721. They found this difference of almost $20,000 a “statistically significant amount.”
Under the agreement, DU must also hire an outside professional economist to study DU’s pay to faculty, as well as discrimination training for employees. To increase transparency, the law school must release Sturm College of Law faculty information, including salary and demographic details.
DU’s statement sent to students through email said, “One of our cornerstone commitments as a university is to be an academic community based on fairness, equity and merit.” The statement continued, “DU undertook the settlement process with great seriousness, deliberation and care for all involved. While confident in our legal position, we made this decision because of a 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.”
This statement is a turn from DU’s previous news release that Marsh was being paid less because of “her sub-standard performance in scholarship, teaching and service.” Even Chancellor Rebecca Chopp supported this report in saying, “We stand by our historical system of evaluation and merit pay.”
Still, the plaintiffs hope that this settlement will lead to change in higher education. Marsh told Denver7, “Hopefully, this will spread. Other law schools will say ‘Yeah, we better straighten up.’ Universities now know that indeed they’re subject to the law like everybody else.”
