Employment – Equal Pay Act – Limitations

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Where a defendant employer has filed a motion to dismiss, that motion should be allowed regarding Massachusetts Equal Pay Act claims outside the limitations period but otherwise denied.

“Harvard objects to Judge Boal’s Report and Recommendation (‘R&R’) recommending the Court deny Harvard’s Motion to Dismiss the Complaint in all but one respect. …

“Harvard’s first Objection concerns the timeliness of claims arising from paychecks outside the statute of limitations. Harvard concedes both that the EPA’s statute of limitations is either two or three years depending on willfulness, and that an EPA claim arises each time an employee receives a paycheck that reflects past discrimination. … Taking these two admissions together, as long as Stone received a paycheck within three years of filing a Complaint (or two years, if Stone ultimately fails to establish willfulness), the resulting Complaint is timely filed.

“Insofar as Harvard’s Objection contends that any claim arising from earlier paychecks is an untimely claim barred by the statute of limitations, several considerations apply. An EPA claim accrues with each paycheck embodying the discriminatory differential in pay. … When Congress adopted the Lilly Ledbetter Act, it neither altered the EPA nor disturbed this portion of the rule. …

“Accordingly, claims arising from paychecks issued more than three years before the filing of the Complaint are untimely absent the application of some other principle of law. Two such principles are the discovery rule and the continuing-violation doctrine. Stone has not contended that the discovery rule can apply under the EPA to toll the statute of limitations nor that the facts warrant the application of such a rule here if it is even available under the law. …

“Judge Boal reasoned that the statute of limitations is an affirmative defense for which Harvard bears the burden of proof to establish its entitlement to the defense with ‘certitude,’ and that at this stage, Harvard failed to bear its burden. Nisselson v. Lernout, 469 F.3d 143, 150 (1st Cir. 2006). Harvard’s response to this burden-of-proof analysis is to contend that the continuing violation doctrine has no application here. The continuing-violation doctrine ‘allows courts to consider conduct that would ordinarily be time barred as long as the untimely incidents represent an ongoing unlawful employment practice.’ Nat’l R.R. Passenger Corp. v. Morgan, 536 U.S. 101, 107 (2002). …

“… While the decision to establish a disparate pay rate for women is continuing in the sense that each paycheck embodying the discriminatory pay continues, several courts after Morgan have suggested that the discrimination is not a ‘continuing violation’ in the same sense as a hostile work environment arising out of the accumulation of multiple individual acts. … Yet at least one district court within the First Circuit, in a detailed decision, applied the continuing-violation doctrine to an EPA claim in the face of a statute-of-limitations challenge at summary judgment. … In light of the intensely factual nature of the claim, the sensible reasons articulated by Judge Boal, and the further considerations noted below, the Court denies the Motion to Dismiss on statute-of-limitations grounds. …

“… Given the framework governing review of a complaint on a motion to dismiss, coupled with the burden Harvard bears on its affirmative defense, the Court concludes Harvard has failed to establish at this stage that the EPA claim is limited to two or three years. In this case, these are questions better determined based on the fuller factual record typically available at summary judgment or trial. … For all the above reasons, the Motion to Dismiss as to the EPA claim is denied. …

“Accordingly, the Court adopts Judge Boal’s R&R (Doc. No. 41), allows that much of the Motion to Dismiss regarding the statute of limitation barring the MEPA claims outside the limitations period, and otherwise denies the Motion to Dismiss (Doc. No. 13).”

Stone v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, et al. (Lawyers Weekly No. 02-240-25) (10 pages) (Sorokin, J.) (Civil No. 24-11897-LTS) (April 25, 2025).

Click here to read the full text of the opinion.