County of Washington v. Gunther, 452 U.S. 161 (1981)
County of Washington v. Gunther is a seminal Supreme Court decision delineating the relationship between Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Equal Pay Act of 1963 (EPA) in sex-based compensation claims.
Does the Bennett Amendment to Title VII limit sex-based wage discrimination claims to the Equal Pay Act's equal-work requirement, thereby barring Title VII claims alleging intentional sex discrimination in compensation for different (not equal) jobs?
Title VII makes it an unlawful employment practice to discriminate "because of" sex with respect to compensation. The Bennett Amendment, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(h), provides that it is not an unlawful employment practice for an employer to differentiate on the basis of sex in determining wages if such differentiation is authorized by the Equal Pay Act of 1963. The Supreme Court interprets the Bennett Amendment to incorporate the EPA's four affirmative defenses (seniority, merit, a system measuring earnings by quantity or quality of production, or any factor other than sex), but not the EPA's threshold "equal work" requirement. Thus, a Title VII plaintiff may pursue a sex-based wage discrimination claim without proving equal work, provided she can show intentional discrimination (subject to the EPA defenses).
No. The Bennett Amendment does not limit Title VII wage discrimination claims to those satisfying the Equal Pay Act's equal-work standard. Plaintiffs who allege intentional sex discrimination in compensation may proceed under Title VII even when their jobs are not equal to those of higher-paid men. The Court affirmed the judgment allowing the plaintiffs' Title VII claim to go forward, while expressly declining to decide whether Title VII recognizes a generalized "comparable worth" theory absent evidence of discriminatory intent.
Gunther is foundational for pay discrimination law. It confirms that Title VII is broader than the Equal Pay Act and that plaintiffs may challenge intentional sex-based wage disparities even when men and women hold different jobs. At the same time, it preserves the EPA's four defenses for employers in Title VII wage cases and declines to endorse a pure comparable-worth theory. For law students, the case is crucial for understanding statutory interaction, the Bennett Amendment, and the evidentiary pathways—beyond strict equal-work comparisons—by which plaintiffs can prove compensation discrimination under Title VII.