Farmers Insurance is facing a class action lawsuit alleging that the company routinely pays female attorneys significantly less than it pays men of equal or lesser experience who do the same work, favors male attorneys for promotions and raises, and routinely assigns higher profile work to its male attorneys. According to the lawsuit, when plaintiff Lynn Coates talked to her supervisor about correcting the disparity, Farmers retaliated by taking action equivalent to demoting her.
According to the suit, Ms. Coates’s salary was only $90,000 when she discovered that a male coworker who performed substantially similar work and had been admitted to the bar a year later than she had been was receiving a salary of between $150,000 and $200,000. She then found out that other male attorneys were being paid more than their more experienced female counterparts. So Ms. Coates complained to her supervisor, who retaliated by gradually relieving her of duties until she was essentially a paralegal.
The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California and claims that Farmers violated the Equal Pay Act, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, and several state laws.
If you have been the victim of gender discrimination in the workplace, please call the New Jersey employment attorneys of Lenzo & Reis, LLC, at (973) 845-9922 or email us for a free case evaluation.