Charges that the University of Denver’s Sturm College of Law violated federal law by paying women full professors less than their male counterparts, which first surfaced in 2013, now have become a federal lawsuit filed on Friday by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
DU law professor Lucy Marsh originally filed the charges with the EEOC. The agency engaged in talks with the university to remedy the situation, but those efforts failed in May, according to the filing.
The suit says that Marsh had worked for the university for 37 years at the time of the 2013 charge, but that her annual salary, $111,977, was less than every male full-time law professor, including many who were hired after she started. Among nine full-time female full professors, the average annual salary was nearly $20,000 less than the full-time male professors — a finding the suit claims is statistically significant.
The suit seeks back wages and other damages for Marsh and other female full professors.
A DU spokeswoman said the school has not yet seen the lawsuit and had no immediate comment.
But last year, the law school stood by its merit-based pay structure and claimed Marsh showed “sub-standard performance in scholarship, teaching and service.”
“In this era of cost containment and assessment, we stand by our historical system of evaluation and merit pay,” said DU Chancellor Rebecca Chopp in a statement at that time.
Marsh said she loves teaching at DU and plans to continue, but that the pay disparity at the law school and elsewhere around the country has been going on for too long and needs to be remedied.
“Up until now, the EEOC has been trying to get DU to make a reconciliation, to get something done without litigation,” Marsh said. “DU has refused to do that. It takes a lot of commitment for the EEOC to bring actual litigation, so they must really think it’s important, as I do. But it’s more important than my particular case.
“The financial disparity is bigger in the academic field than other fields,” she added. “I’d like to impact DU and academic institutions everywhere to finally see the writing on the wall.”
