Mississippi set to become last U.S. state with an equal pay law

Mississippi will become the final state with a law that requires equal pay for equal work for women and men. The law will take effect on July 1.

A 1963 federal law requires equal pay for equal work, but Mississippi has the only lawless state since Alabama enacted one in 2019. Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves, a Republican, signed Bill 770 on Wednesday. of the House.

Other states have enacted laws that require equal pay regardless of gender, while some states have enacted laws that prohibit companies from asking about pay histories, which can block women in lower-paying jobs. Despite progress, women still earn on average just over 80 cents for every $ 1 earned by men, a gap that means women are less prepared for retirement and more likely to live in poverty than men.

The gap is even worse in Mississippi, with a 2017 report from the University of Mississippi Research Center showing that women in the state earned 27% less than men for full-time work, compared to a gap salary of 19% nationwide.

The new Mississippi law says a lawsuit must be filed within two years of a worker “knowing or should have known” about the pay gap.

If the demand for wage discrimination is successful, the employer should increase the wages of the worker with a lower wage instead of reducing the wages of the highest paid, said the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, Angela Cockerham, independent of Magnolia who pushed for legislation. .

Critic: Law could be “harmful”

The law says companies with at least five employees must pay the same salary to women and men who work full-time who require “equal skill, education, effort and responsibility” and who are done “under similar working conditions.”

Several exceptions are allowed, such as seniority, merit, quantity or quality of production and “any factor other than sex”, including salary history and whether there was competition to hire an employee.

Cassandra Welchlin, leader of the Mississippi Black Women’s Roundtable, advocates for equal pay, but said the new law is “harmful” because it would allow a businessman to pay a woman less than a man based on history. wages that workers bring to new jobs.

The University of Mississippi Research Center study said that part of the state’s gender pay gap could be explained by the types of jobs that women and men worked in, but the unexplained wage gap remained around 18% in Mississippi and about 15% nationwide.

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