The California Equal Pay Act: 5 things to know if a coworker makes more than you

The Act covers every employee in California, and it cares about the work you do, not what your employer calls it. Full-time, part-time, hourly, salaried, public sector, private sector. It doesn’t matter. If you’re paid less than a coworker of a different sex, race, or ethnicity for substantially similar work, your employer has to justify the difference. You don’t have to show anyone meant to shortchange you. The gap is the problem.

Two things about the comparison trip people up. First, the coworker doesn’t need to work in your building. The law used to require a “same establishment” comparison; since 2016 it doesn’t, so a colleague doing your job at another location of the same company counts.

Second, titles are close to irrelevant. It’s common to find “housekeepers” paid less than “janitors,” or “client leads” paid less than “account managers,” for work that is, day to day, the same job. The test is whether the two jobs, taken as a whole, call for similar skill, effort, and responsibility under similar conditions. A different title or a handful of different tasks doesn’t end the conversation.

Pay means more than base salary. Since January 1, 2026, when SB 642 took effect, “wages” under the Act includes just about everything of value you get for working: salary or hourly pay, overtime, bonuses, commissions, stock and stock options, profit sharing, life insurance, vacation and holiday pay, allowances, travel reimbursements, and benefits. So if you and a coworker have identical salaries but their bonus or equity grant is bigger for the same work, that’s a gap the law can reach.

Yes, but the employer has to do the explaining, and the explanation has to cover the whole gap. Once you show that a coworker of a different sex, race, or ethnicity is paid more for substantially similar work, the burden shifts. Your employer must prove the difference comes from one of four things:

• A seniority system.
• A merit system.
• A system that pays by how much or how well you produce, like commissions or piece rates.
• Some other legitimate factor, such as education, training, or experience.

The last one is where most employers go, and it’s narrower than it sounds. The factor has to be job-related and necessary to the business, and you can still prevail by showing there was another way to meet that need without the pay gap. We cover each defense, and where it tends to fail, in our guide to employer defenses.

Here’s the part employers tend to miss: the reasons have to account for every dollar. If a company can justify $5,000 of a $12,000 difference, it has not met its burden. “He’s a stronger performer” or “she negotiated harder,” with nothing on paper behind it, rarely survives.

And prior salary is off the table: it can’t justify a pay gap. Since 2018, employers also can’t ask applicants about salary history. If your gap started with a lowball offer years ago, that history helps you; it doesn’t help them. One caution: if you volunteer what you made before without being asked, a prospective employer may consider it when setting your pay. It still can’t use prior salary to justify a gap, but it’s usually better not to bring it up.

You can, and your employer can’t punish you for it. The Act says an employer may not stop you from telling people what you make, asking a coworker what they make, talking about wages generally, or helping a coworker who wants to do any of that. A separate statute goes further: your employer can’t make you sign a pay confidentiality agreement or discipline you for breaking one. The “don’t discuss your salary” line in the handbook? Unenforceable.

You can also ask your employer for the pay scale for your current position, and it has to give it to you. That’s often the quickest way to find out whether you’ve been sitting at the bottom of a range while someone else sits at the top.

A couple of limits. The law doesn’t require any coworker to tell you anything. And it won’t protect you if you go into the payroll system and pull files you have no business accessing. Conversations, your own documents, formal requests: fine. Self-help: don’t.

Retaliation is its own claim. Firing, demoting, cutting hours, reassigning, or otherwise punishing you for talking about pay, complaining about a gap, filing a claim, or backing a coworker’s claim is illegal. The remedies include reinstatement, lost wages and benefits, and interest, on top of whatever the underlying pay claim is worth. One warning: retaliation claims have a much shorter deadline, potentially as short as a year, so don’t sit on it.

Three years from the most recent violation, and you can recover for up to six years back. That’s the rule under an amendment that took effect January 1, 2026. Before that you had two years, or three if you could prove the violation was willful, which was a fight in itself.

What counts as “the most recent violation” matters a great deal here. Each paycheck that reflects the unequal rate is treated as a fresh violation. So is the day the pay decision was made and the day you first became subject to it. Practically, the clock resets every pay period. A rate set five years ago is still actionable if you were paid at that rate sometime in the last three. Our equal pay deadlines guide walks through the timing in more detail.

Recovery runs back to when the violation began, capped at six years.

Two notes of caution. How the new three-year rule applies to a gap that ended before 2026 is still being worked out, so if your underpayment stopped a while ago, get advice now rather than later. And, again, retaliation claims have their own shorter window.

The pay difference, doubled, plus interest and attorney’s fees. That’s the baseline. The Act awards the underpayment itself and then an equal amount as liquidated damages. Say a coworker made $15,000 more than you for four years: $60,000 in back pay, another $60,000 in liquidated damages, interest on top, and reasonable attorney’s fees paid by the employer. Where the gap is tied to sex or race, there is often a companion claim under the Fair Employment and Housing Act, which opens the door to emotional distress damages and, in egregious cases, punitive damages. Our guide to what a California equal pay claim is worth covers the math in more detail.

You have two places to bring the claim, and you don’t have to try one before the other.

• The Labor Commissioner’s Office takes equal pay complaints, investigates them, and can hold a hearing if it needs one to settle the facts. No filing fee, no lawyer required. It works for smaller, cleaner claims.
• Superior court is the other route. A lawsuit gets you discovery into your employer’s pay data, a jury, and the ability to bundle the equal pay claim with discrimination, retaliation, and other wage claims in a single case. Bigger or contested claims usually end up here.

Before you talk to anyone, pull together what you already have: pay stubs, your offer letter, raise and bonus letters, performance reviews, your job description. Ask for your pay scale in writing. Jot down what you know about the better-paid coworker, including their title, what they do, when they started, and how you learned what they make. Keep copies somewhere other than your work laptop. And don’t take documents you aren’t entitled to have; it can turn your case into theirs.

If a coworker is paid more than you for the same work, you could be owed years of back pay, and the law doubles it. The California equal pay lawyers at Wilshire Law Firm may be able to review your situation in a free, confidential case review with a legal professional, available 24/7, with no fees unless you get paid.

This article is a general overview, not legal advice. The rules change, and every situation is different. Contact Wilshire Law Firm to talk through yours.