The Equal Pay Act was passed as amendments to the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1963. The law requires equal pay for equal work on jobs, which require equal skill, effort and responsibility and which are performed under similar working conditions. The jobs must be in the same facility. This law was intended to stop the practice of paying women less then men for the same work.

There are exceptions for seniority systems, merit systems, systems, which measure earnings by quantity or quality of production or for any acceptable business reason other than, sex.

A plaintiff must point to a job performed by someone of the opposite sex that is paid more than the same or substantially equal job, which she (or he) is performing. Equal Pay Act violations may be enforced by filing a charge with the EEOC or by filing a private law suit.

Employers are not required to pay equal pay for jobs of comparable worth under current federal law.