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Justices hear Iowa State gender wage-discrimination arguments
‘It's a form of discrimination in which the employer actually financially benefits if they discriminate against women’
Oct. 9, 2024 5:00 pm, Updated: Oct. 10, 2024 7:42 am
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The Iowa Supreme Court this week mulled a question at the heart of an Iowa State University professor’s lawsuit alleging decades of wage discrimination: how to interpret the law in a way that motivates fair compensation.
Ann Brown, representing ISU agronomy professor emeritus Silvia Cianzio, during oral arguments before the court Wednesday directed justices to consider "why the damages recoverable for wage discrimination are different than the damages recoverable for other forms of discrimination.”
“Wage discrimination is very specific, in that it's a form of discrimination in which the employer actually financially benefits if they discriminate against women,” she argued. “It's called ‘pink sourcing,’ so all the work and only 70 percent of the cost to the employer for having employees perform equal work.”
Because of that financial incentive, according to Brown, the statute has to have “teeth.”
“The damage provision has to overcome the financial benefit that the employer obtains by paying women less, or it doesn't work,” she said.
Arguing the Iowa law was given those teeth and now ISU is trying to defang the provisions in its defense — which a District Court allowed last year by agreeing to limit Cianzio’s damage recovery — Brown asked justices to reverse the lower court’s ruling.
“If the 300-day limitation — as the state's asking for in this case — applies, even in the event that she proves a willful violation, the most that she could recover is $76,000,” Brown said. “So a savvy employer has no reason, other than ethically, to increase women's pay — because they are going to be money ahead.”
The lowest paid
Cianzio started her lengthy tenure at ISU in 1970 as a master’s student and then a doctoral student, working as a research assistant and associate before completing her doctorate in 1978. She joined the faculty as an assistant professor in 1979, was promoted to associate professor in 1984 and became a full professor in 1995, all within the Department of Agronomy.
Fifty years after beginning her ISU service, Cianzio in 2020 was asked to lead a diversity, equity and inclusion committee for her department — through which she reviewed salary data and discovered male professors were earning more than female professors, according to her lawsuit, first filed on Jan. 12, 2022.
She learned the department in 2019 had 22 full professors — including 19 men and three women — and the women earned substantially less.
Cianzio was one of six full professors specialized in plant breeding — and the only woman. Although she reported in her lawsuit having academic and scientific achievements on par or better than her male counterparts, she was the lowest paid — earning $11,276 to $46,049 less a year.
When Cianzio reported her findings to the Agronomy Department chair, the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and ISU Human Resources, they “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 suit.
Cianzio retired Dec. 31, 2020. Her base pay for the fiscal year before her retirement was $117,042.
‘Their answer is they don't have to pay’
Through her lawsuit, Cianzio is asking for wage-discrimination damages dating back to 2009, when the Iowa Code section was enacted. Brown said her client was shorted $530,000 over that period.
“That also represents the amount of money that Iowa State has saved over that time,” she said, arguing the statute is clear on how to keep employers from angling toward those savings. “The damage provision allows for recovery of two or three times the wage differential during the period of discrimination,” she argued.
But in siding with ISU in capping the period through which Cianzio can recover damages, the lower court noted interpretation of the law hasn’t been resolved by the state Supreme Court.
“While the wording of Iowa Code … does appear to lengthen the statute of limitations, and can certainly be read to allow recovery for the entire period of discrimination, irrespective of the length of that period, reasonable minds could differ or be uncertain as to the meaning of period of time for which the complainant has been discriminated against,” according to the district court — arguing, essentially, damages would be too high without a limit.
“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.”
But Supreme Court Justice Edward M. Mansfield said that argument doesn’t ring true for workers wanting fair compensation.
“That doesn’t sound like any human being I’m familiar with,” Mansfield said. “They're underpaid and they're saying, ‘Well, instead of dealing with it now, I'm just going to wait and collect a bigger check later on.’ I mean, most of us want present gratification, don't we?”
When Justice Christopher McDonald asked what compelled Cianzio to file her lawsuit after decades of wage discrimination, Brown informed him of the ironic set of circumstances that led her to investigate the university’s pay practices.
“So she led a committee to investigate potential wage disparities in the department, and she found them, and now their answer is they don't have to pay that,” McDonald said.
Vanessa Miller covers higher education for The Gazette.
Comments: (319) 339-3158; vanessa.miller@thegazette.com
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