H.R. 17: Paycheck Fairness Act

H.R. 17, the Paycheck Fairness Act, reworks the federal equal-pay law along several fronts at once. The change you'd feel first is in hiring: an employer could not ask you — or your current or former employer — about your past wages before making an offer, and could not use your pay history to set your new wages. A first violation carries a $5,000 civil penalty, each later offense adds $1,000 up to a $10,000 cap, and a worker could recover special damages up to $10,000 plus attorneys' fees.

The bill also makes pay-discrimination cases harder to wave away. An employer could still defend a pay gap by pointing to a reason other than sex, but that reason would have to be job-related, tied to business necessity, unrelated to a sex-based pay difference, and account for the entire gap.

It spells out who is covered. For equal-pay purposes, the bill says "sex" includes pregnancy, childbirth and related medical conditions, sexual orientation, gender identity, and sex characteristics including intersex traits.

Workers would gain leverage in court. They could seek compensatory damages, and punitive damages where they prove an employer acted with malice or reckless indifference, though the federal government would be shielded from punitive damages. Equal-pay claims could also be brought as class actions, which matters when one pay practice affects an entire workforce.

Large employers would face new reporting. Within 24 months of enactment, the EEOC would begin collecting annual compensation data from private employers with 100 or more employees, including federal contractors, broken out by sex, race, and national origin, and would publish aggregate figures every 18 months.