By Brad Williams

Led by Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate, the Colorado General Assembly passed multiple important employment-related bills during its 2019 legislative session.  Colorado’s new Democratic Governor, Jared Polis, recently signed all the bills below into law.

Equal Pay for Equal Work Act (SB 19-085):  The most significant employment-related bill passed during the 2019 legislative session, this Act is intended to “ensure that employees with similar job duties are paid the same wage rate regardless of sex.”  The Act applies to all public and private employers in Colorado, and prohibits paying employees of one sex a wage rate—defined as all compensation, including hourly wages, salaries, and other compensation—which is less than the wage rate paid to employees of a different sex for substantially similar work.  Exceptions include pay differentials based on seniority or merit systems; systems measuring quality or quantity of production; the location where the work occurs; whether the work requires travel; and employees’ education, training, or experience, to the extent reasonably related to the work in question.

The Act prohibits employers from asking about or relying upon a prospective employee’s wage rate history in order to determine his or her wage rate.  It allows aggrieved employees to sue for up to three years of backpay for unlawful pay disparities, and separately allows such employees to sue for an equal amount in “liquidated damages,” unless the employer can show its pay violations were in “good faith.”  The Act creates an incentive—other than just the risk of lawsuits—for employers to conduct regular audits of their workforces to uncover pay disparities by permitting judges and juries to consider such audits (assuming they occur in the preceding two years) as evidence of an employer’s “good faith.”  The Act also permits aggrieved employees to sue for their attorneys’ fees and other damages.

Read more >>