Women suing Disney over gender pay gap gain class certification

LOS ANGELES (CN) — A Superior Court judge, on Friday, agreed to certify a class of female plaintiffs suing the Walt Disney Company over a gender pay gap.

"Disney has been gaslighting us for four years, and today they were proved wrong," said plaintiff's attorney Lori Andrus, after the hearing. "This case is not about nine individual plaintiffs. It's about all the women in California who work for Disney, and who are fed up of being paid less than their male counterparts, and who are seeking fair treatment. That's all."

Andrus said that women at Disney earn, on average, 2% less than men doing roughly the same jobs, not including bonuses and other incentive plans, which Andrus also believes are doled out in an unequal manner. The lead plaintiff in the complaint, LaRonda Rasmussen, worked as a manager in 2017 and earned $109,958 per year — lower than each of the six men that held the same job title, and more than $16,000 less than the lowest paid man in the same job.

Five months after Rasmussen complained to human resources about the pay gap, she was told the discrepancy "was not due to gender."

The suit was filed as a class action, meaning that the plaintiffs were seeking to represent nearly 9,000 female employees of Disney in California. Though known mostly as an entertainment company, Disney is a massive, publicly traded conglomerate — one of the 100 largest companies in the world, according to Forbes Magazine, which owns cruise ships and resorts all over the world, not to mention child care care centers, vast amounts of real estate, financial services, technology companies and so on.

Disney's lawyers sought to block class action certification, arguing that its company's assets were so numerous and varied, that different job categories weren't necessarily comparable to one another.

"Certification in this case would be unprecedented," said Disney attorney Felicia Davis, during Friday's hearing, noting that it would include landscape architects, graphic designers, nurses, pastry chefs, mechanical engineers, visual effects designers, aircraft mechanics, vacation club guides — so many that the judge cut her off to ask when the list would finally end. Davis said that such a diversity of class members would make a trial unwieldy.

"If you want to imagine what a trial of this case might look like," said Davis. To which Superior Court Judge Elihu Berle interjected: "I know, it’s going to be horrendous."

Davis also said that that decisions on what to pay its workers are not centralized, and left up to individual supervisors.

"Last year, hundreds of compensation professionals set starting pay for more than 4,000 employees," said Davis. "This is quintessential decentralized decision making. It's the opposite of a practice required for class certification."

Andrus disputed this claim, saying there was "strong evidence of Disney's centralization and uniformity of its practices." She also said that a "regression analysis" of every employee's salary, controlling for other variables, has found that women are routinely paid less. Davis, meanwhile, argued that the differences between all the many divisions and departments at Disney mean that its jobs "don't fit neatly into models. They do explain pay differences."

The plaintiffs were suing under two state laws, the Equal Pay Act, and the Fair The Fair Employment and Housing Act, and seeking to be certified as two somewhat different yet overlapping classes for each.

Ruling from the bench, Berle decided to certify the class for the Equal Pay Act claim, but not for the Fair Employment and Housing Claim.

"Unlike the EPA claims, the issue with the FEHA claims is whether a common impact issues from a common policy," Berle said. To prove that, he said, "individualized inquiries would be necessary."

As for the Equal Pay Act claims, Berle said the issue was only about the common policy, and for that, the regression analysis could prove to be enough.

"If the trial proceeds with the statistical model, defendants will have chance to impeach that model," Berle said. "It's not an impediment to class certification of EPA claims."

In an email, a spokesperson for Disney said: "We are disappointed with the court’s ruling as to the Equal Pay Act claims and are considering our options.”

The decision to certify the class is not appealable, though the issue can be raised on appeal after trial.

After the hearing, Andrus said her clients were prepared to go to trial, which she said has to start by October 2024. As for her side's chances, she sounded bullish.

"I think Disney's defense is going to break down," she told reporters after the hearing, "because here's what they're gonna say: 'Oh, well, she should be paid less because of blah, blah, blah. She should be paid less because of blah, blah, blah. Because if you do that in front of a jury, you're dead. There's no way that's going to be acceptable to a California jury in 2024."

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