Iowa Supreme Court to consider Iowa State wage, gender discrimination case

More than two years after a retired Iowa State University agronomy professor sued her former employer, the Board of Regents and the state for wage and gender discrimination, the Iowa Supreme Court will hear the appeal of a lower court’s August ruling limiting her ability to recover lost wages.

“The parties disagree on the appropriate recovery period for wage discrimination claims,” according to the Polk County District Court’s Aug. 2 ruling that Silvia Cianzio’s claims are limited to a window of time prior to her filing a civil rights complaint.

“The court agrees with the defendants that allowing a plaintiff to recover for a relatively unlimited time frame — perhaps limited only by a person’s work life span — would produce impractical or absurd results and would reward a plaintiff for failing to report discriminatory wages practices when those practices are discovered,” District Judge Heather Lauber wrote in her order, which Cianzio appealed and the Iowa Supreme Court has retained.

19 men and three women

Cianzio began at ISU in 1970 as a master’s student and then a doctoral student, working as a research assistant and then associate before completing her Ph.D. in 1978. She took a postdoc position for a year before being chosen from a pool of applicants to join the ISU faculty as an assistant professor in 1979.

She was promoted to associate professor in 1984 and then to full professor in 1995, all within the Department of Agronomy, according to her curriculum vitae and lawsuit, first filed on Jan. 12, 2022. Her area of expertise was soybean breeding — with her research “extensively published” and recognized “by numerous organizations.”

In her lawsuit, Cianzio reported she was one of few women professors in the department.

Fifty years after starting at ISU, Cianzio in 2020 was asked to chair the department’s diversity, equity and inclusion committee — for which she conducted a survey and reviewed salary data for the department. In doing so, Cianzio discovered male professors were paid more than female professors, according to her lawsuit.

Cianzio, according to the lawsuit, “reported her findings of gender-based pay inequity to the chair of the Agronomy Department, the dean and associate dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and the Human Resources Department.”

She said she found the department in 2019 had 22 full professors — 19 men and three women — and the women earned, on average, substantially less than the men.

“There were two women associate professors out of five, and the women are the lowest paid,” according to her lawsuit. “There are two female assistant professors out of seven. One is the lowest paid and the other is the third lowest paid.”

Cianzio was among six full professors specialized in plant breeding — and the only woman. Despite having academic and scientific achievements on par or exceeding her male counterparts, she was the lowest paid — earning $11,276 to $46,049 less a year than the male professors in her specialty, according to her lawsuit.

“In response to (Cianzio’s) complaint, defendants responded by acknowledging that women professors were paid less than male professors but stating that they did not intend to take any action to correct the inequity because they did not believe it to be significant,” according to her lawsuit.

She retired on Dec. 31, 2020, after spending a quarter of a century as a full professor and 41 years on the ISU payroll. Her base pay for the full fiscal year before her retirement, 2019, was $117,042, state records show.

‘Good faith’

With her lawsuit, Cianzio aimed to recover up to three times “the wage differential paid to comparable employees during the entire period of discrimination, along with court costs and attorney’s fees.”

“Defendants discriminated against (Cianzio) with respect to the terms and conditions of her employment by paying (her) less than males performing equal work,” according to her lawsuit. “(Cianzio’s) gender was a motivating factor in defendants’ discriminatory conduct.”

In its defense, the university, regents and state asked the court to restrict Cianzio’s ability to recover any damages to a much more limited time frame, given the statute of limitations. A judge agreed, noting the “absurd results” that would occur otherwise.

“The court, therefore, finds the applicable statute of limitations for wage discrimination claims to be two-years prior to the timely filing of a (civil rights) complaint.”

Given the high court has retained the case, proceedings at the district level have been paused pending a decision. The state has responded to the general allegations, though, beyond arguing for the statute of limitations — reporting any action it took with respect to Cianzio’s compensation were taken in “good faith and for legitimate, non-discriminatory, and non-retaliatory reasons.”

Vanessa Miller covers higher education for The Gazette.

Comments: (319) 339-3158; vanessa.miller@thegazette.com