In 2017, the City of Philadelphia enacted the Wage Equity Ordinance to address the pay gap between men and women and between different races and ethnicities. The Ordinance contains two provisions: the “Inquiry Provision,” which prohibits employers from asking about a prospective employee’s wage history; and the “Reliance Provision,” which prohibits an employer from relying on wage history at any point in the process of setting or negotiating a prospective employee’s wage. Mayor Jim Kenny signed the Ordinance into law in January 2017 after it was unanimously passed by Philadelphia City Council.

The Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce, however, filed a lawsuit alleging that both provisions of the Wage Equity Ordinance infringed on the chamber and its members’ First Amendment freedom of speech rights. In the Chamber of Commerce for Greater Philadelphia v. City of Philadelphia et al., the Honorable Mitchell Goldberg from the Eastern District of Pennsylvania granted the chamber a preliminary injunction on the Inquiry Provision in April 2018, holding that the Ordinance violates employers’ freedom of speech rights. Judge Goldberg, however, upheld the Reliance Provision, which prohibits reliance on wage history, based on the court’s conclusion that such reliance did not implicate protected speech. In other words, Judge Goldberg found that an employer could ask about a candidate’s salary history, but could not use the information. Both parties appealed to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.
Continue Reading Don’t Ask, Don’t Use – the Third Circuit allows the Philadelphia salary history ban ordinance to go into effect