On Friday, a judge officially approved a class action lawsuit asserting that Disney underpaid 9,000 women compared to their male colleagues.
This legal action stands as the most extensive case ever certified under California’s Equal Pay Act, a law prohibiting gender-based pay disparities for substantially similar work.
Lori Andrus, the attorney representing the plaintiffs, expressed satisfaction with the decision outside the downtown Los Angeles courtroom. “Disney has been gaslighting these women for four years,” she said. “They love their jobs. They love the brand. But they want to be respected and treated the way they should be in the workplace.”
“We are disappointed with the court’s ruling as to the Equal Pay Act claims and are considering our options,” a spokesperson for The Walt Disney Company said to Variety.
Disney’s attorney, Felicia Davis, contended that the plaintiffs are attempting to compare salaries across numerous job groups, reflecting the decentralized decisions of numerous managers.
The class encompasses female Disney employees who have served in California since April 1, 2015, in non-union positions below the vice president level and have been assigned to a specific job family and level. It includes employees from Disneyland hotels and theme parks, the cruise line, Disney film and TV studios, ABC, Marvel, Lucasfilm, and other units, excluding Pixar, ESPN, Hulu, Fox, or FX.
Davis argued that merely being in the same job family and level does not necessarily imply “substantially similar” work. She provided a detailed list of diverse job titles — such as music producers, pastry chefs, nurses, architects, ride engineers, visual effects directors, security dog handlers, and Star Wars social media managers — to emphasize the diverse nature of the class members, challenging the merit of certification. Both parties have enlisted experts to support or refute claims of a gender pay gap. Andrus asserted that women across the class experience a 2% lower starting pay compared to men.
Andrus was also pursuing a parallel claim under the state’s Fair Employment and Housing Act, encompassing a broader group of 12,000 women.
Judge Elihu M. Berle rejected class certification for that claim, primarily hinging on the use of a new hire’s pay history in determining their starting salary. Andrus argued that this practice discriminated against women. Berle held that Disney managers were permitted to use pay history as a factor until 2017 but were not obligated to do so, thus lacking a companywide policy to contest.
A status conference is scheduled for Feb. 9, and the trial is anticipated to take place sometime before October, according to Andrus.
