$15.0M
Recovery for employees denied legally required meal and rest breaks.
Employment
Pay Discrimination in Tech: Levels, Bands, and Equity
In California tech companies, base salary is only part of the story — and often the smallest part of the gap. The real disparities live in level assignments at hire, equity grants and refreshes, and bonus targets. For years those channels sat in a legal gray zone. Not anymore: since January 1, 2026, California’s Equal Pay Act expressly counts stock, stock options, and bonuses as wages. If you are doing the same work as a higher-leveled, better-granted peer, the law now reads your comp the way your offer letter does — as a total package.
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Understanding Your Equal Pay Case
Explore essential resources on your rights, your options, and what to expect — everything you need to navigate the legal process, all in one place.
Levels are pay machinery: they set the band, the bonus target, and the equity range. When someone is hired at L4 doing L5 work — or promoted in title while their level lags the scope they carry — every element of their compensation is suppressed by one decision. California's test compares the work actually performed, not the level label, so a persistent mismatch between your scope and your level, alongside higher-leveled peers of another sex, race, or ethnicity doing substantially similar work, is the skeleton of a claim. Level assignment records, calibration notes, and scope documents are all discoverable.
Yes. Refreshes, initial grants, sign-on equity, bonus targets and payouts, profit sharing — all are "wages" under § 1197.5(l)(3) since the SB 642 amendments. This matters because refresh cycles are discretionary and opaque, which is exactly where disparities accumulate: two engineers with equal ratings whose refresh grants diverge year after year are building a measurable, recoverable wage gap. And because damages reach back up to six years, several vesting cycles can be inside the recovery window.
Only if it survives the bona fide factor test: the market-based explanation must not be derived from sex-, race-, or ethnicity-based differentials, must be job-related for the position, and must be consistent with business necessity — and it must explain the entire gap. Market surveys built on historically discriminatory pay, applied selectively, or contradicted by the employer's own internal parity data do not qualify; our breakdown of the four employer defenses shows how each is tested. Employers with 100+ employees also file annual pay data with the state under Government Code § 12999, and their own submissions can undercut a market-data story.
Generally yes. California has no same-establishment requirement, and substantially similar work is judged by skill, effort, and responsibility — not org chart proximity. A backend engineer in San Diego can be a comparator for one in San Francisco; a data scientist on one product line can compare to another. For remote-first companies, this breadth is especially important: the comparator pool is the company, not the office.
Your offer letter and any level/band documentation, equity grant notices and vesting schedules, performance reviews, promotion or calibration communications, and anything you know about peers' levels or grants — including pay ranges from job postings, which California employers with 15 or more employees must publish under Labor Code § 432.3. Don't worry about completeness: discovery fills the gaps. Do respect confidentiality agreements about company IP; pay information itself, though, is yours to discuss — that right is protected.
Meet Our Equal Pay Attorneys
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Our award-winning attorneys have recovered billions for clients while taking on insurance companies and major corporations.
John G. Yslas, Esq.Senior Partner, Chair of the Employment Wage & Hour Class Action Department
Mary Lee Caruso, Esq.Senior Partner
Tyler J. Woods, Esq.Senior Partner
Arrash Fattahi, Esq.Partner
Benjamin Haber, Esq.Partner
Nicol Hajjar, Esq.Partner
Diego Aviles, Esq.Junior Partner
Jeffrey Bils, Esq.Junior Partner
Emily Borman, Esq.Junior Partner
Jose Maria D. Patino, Jr., Esq.Junior Partner
Christina M. LeJunior Partner
William M. Pao, Esq.Junior Partner
Eugene Zinovyev, Esq.Junior Partner$12.0M
Recovery for employees denied legally required meal and rest breaks.
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Past results do not guarantee similar outcomes. Each case is unique and evaluated on its own facts.
Is a Smaller Equity Grant for the Same Work an Equal Pay Violation?
It can be. Labor Code § 1197.5(l)(3), as amended by SB 642, defines wages to include "all forms of pay" — expressly naming salary, bonuses, stock, stock options, and profit sharing. So the comparison in an equal pay case now runs across total compensation: an employer that pays two engineers identical base salaries but grants one materially larger RSU packages for substantially similar work must justify the difference with the same four lawful factors that govern salary — a seniority system, a merit system, a production-based system, or a bona fide, job-related factor consistent with business necessity. "That's the band for their level" only works if the level assignment itself survives scrutiny — and down-leveling at hire is one of the most common ways tech pay gaps are built.
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Equal Pay FAQs
Our Most Frequently Asked Questions
We've answered the most common ones below. If yours isn't here, call us — we're available 24/7.
Possibly — since 2026, equity is expressly part of the wage comparison. If your work is substantially similar and the employer can't justify the difference with a lawful, consistently applied factor, that refresh gap is recoverable, doubled.
If the work is substantially similar, the level label doesn't shield the pay difference — California compares duties, not titles or levels. Down-leveling at hire is a classic fact pattern.
No — prior salary cannot justify a pay disparity in California, and employers can't ask for salary history at all.
Yes. The Equal Pay Act covers every California employer regardless of size — and option-heavy startup comp is squarely inside the amended definition of wages.
It depends on facts like where you work, your contract, and the employer's footprint. Multi-state coverage questions are exactly what a free case review untangles — ask before assuming you're outside the law.