by plaintiffs to support certification. In Jirek, et al., v. AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals LP, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 87136 (N.D. Ill. May 14, 2024), the plaintiffs brought suit against their former employer, AstraZeneca, a global biopharmaceutical company, alleging violations of the Equal Pay Act of 1963 (EPA) for paying female employees less than their male counterparts for the same or substantially similar work in sales positions within the same pay scale levels. The plaintiffs’ evidence in support of this sex-based wage discrimination claim included 10 online job postings from different locations, a declaration from each of the named-plaintiffs, AstraZeneca’s “Career Ladder Program Guide” (an internal evaluation guide from July 2010, which, according the AstraZeneca’s declarant, had not been used since 2015), and two unequal pay violations issued by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Program’s (“OFCCP”) following the OFCCP’s evaluation and analysis of AstraZeneca’s payment structure. According to the conditional certification motion, the OFCCP found that, beginning in September 2016, AstraZeneca failed to comply with Executive Order 11246, which prohibits companies that do over $10,000 in U.S. government business from discriminating against employees on the basis of gender. Id. Specifically, the OFCCP found that AstraZeneca discriminated against female employees in “Specialty Care Sales Representative Level 4 positions” in violation of the Executive Order, after comparing random samplings of men and women and finding that there was a difference in $2,182.07 between the sexes in sales representative positions. As a result of the OFCCP Conciliation Agreement, all the women in the OFCCP’s sampling were entitled to back pay plus interest. The complaint alleged that despite this, the defendant did not change its discriminatory pay practices until at least 2021. The plaintiffs filed a motion for conditional certification of a collective action, and the court granted the motion and permitted the plaintiffs to send notice to “females employed by AstraZeneca in sales positions as of December 30, 2018.” Id. at *28. Of the evidence submitted by the plaintiffs’ counsel, the court noted that it found the similarity in language amongst job postings to be a compelling reason to support the plaintiffs’ assertion that the sales representatives were similarly-situated, regardless of location. Although the court noted that the defendant’s declaration from AstraZeneca’s Vice President of Human Resources attempted to “diffuse” some of the similarities, the court reasoned that these factual questions were inappropriate for resolution at the conditional certification stage. Id. The court also declined to engage in other “credibility determinations” that AstraZeneca presented to respond to the evidence the plaintiffs submitted. The court further observed that the “OFCCP Agreement [gave] the plaintiffs the hook they need[ed] to tie the nationwide body of sales representatives to alleged widespread gender-based pay discrimination.” Id. at *14. The court concluded its analysis of the plaintiffs’ conditional certification motion by noting the weakness of the plaintiffs’ declarations, stating, “[f]rankly, the plaintiffs’ declarations do not say much, primarily regurgitating allegations contained in their already thin amended complaint. But another word for ‘allegations lifted from a complaint and a repeated verbatim in a declaration’ is ‘evidence’ and arguably weak evidence is still evidence that the court – again – may not weigh at this stage.” Id. at *16. In the same order, the court directed the parties to continue engaging in negotiations regarding the proposed form of notice, and tolled the statute of limitations for the time period that elapsed between the court’s decision and the court’s approval of the notice form. Meanwhile, in Chavez, et al. v. San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District , 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 14785 (N.D. Cal. Jan. 28, 2024), a proposed class of former employees filed suit against their former employer Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) alleging that BART failed to accommodate their religious beliefs in connection with receiving the COVID-19 vaccination in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, the First Amendment free exercise of religion, and the California Fair Employment and Housing Act. Of the 148 applications for religious exemptions that BART received, 73 employees were ultimately terminated for failure to comply with the vaccine mandate after their requests were either denied or BART concluded that no accommodation was available without creating an undue hardship on the company. The court ultimately determined that common issues did not predominate because the individualized nature of religious beliefs, the employer’s undue hardship considerations, and the diverse job roles of the class members made it impractical to resolve these issues on a class-wide basis. Additionally, the court ruled that a class action would not be the superior method of adjudication given the significant interests of class members in controlling their own claims and the likely difficulties in managing such a diverse class action. Therefore, the court denied the plaintiffs’ motion for class certification. Likewise, in Mahone, et al. v. Amazon.com, Inc., 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 133604 (W.D. Wash. July 29, 2024), the plaintiffs faced a significant challenge in proving that their claims shared sufficient common ground, ultimately leading to the denial of class certification. The plaintiffs filed a class action alleging that the defendant violated the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA) by denying reemployment and
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Duane Morris Discrimination Class Action Review – 2025
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