Female teachers are again suing Central Bucks over unequal pay

Female teachers who say the Central Bucks School District has underpaid them compared with men are again taking their case to court, after a trial last summer ended in a hung jury.

In a lawsuit filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia, the women — more than 120 current and former district teachers — accuse Central Bucks of violating the Equal Pay Act. Upon their hiring, the women say, they were all placed at lower steps on the district’s salary scale than their prior years of experience warranted. In contrast, they list male employees who were credited with their full years of experience, or more experience than they actually had.

The new lawsuit comes after the mistrial in 2024. That case, which began with two named plaintiffs, expanded to cover more than 300 women after it was declared a collective action. But in August, a federal judge decertified the case’s collective-action status, meaning teachers who still wanted to pursue claims against the district would have to file lawsuits on their own.

During the trial, “it became clear that all plaintiffs are not similarly situated, as required to sustain a collective action under the Equal Pay Act,” wrote the judge, Michael Baylson.

It isn’t clear how the new lawsuit, which is also before Baylson, addresses the judge’s order. While the lawsuit lists more than 120 named plaintiffs, it argues that, whatever their title, they performed similar work.

“All teachers employed by the district have performed substantially equal work of substantially equal skill, responsibility and effort under similar working conditions,” the lawsuit says — including male teachers who were treated more favorably by the district than the female plaintiffs.

A lawyer for the plaintiffs, Ed Mazurek, declined to comment. Mazurek is also representing the two named plaintiffs in the original pay-equity case, Rebecca Cartee-Haring and Dawn Marinello, which is continuing.

Following the mistrial, Baylson ordered Cartee-Haring and Marinello to identify specific male teachers as “comparators” in that case. The women, both English teachers, identified social studies teachers who the women contend were placed at higher steps on the district’s salary scale than their years of experience warranted.

The district argues that the male teachers are not fair comparisons to the women, including because they don’t teach the same subjects.

It also objected to Cartee-Haring and Marinello introducing evidence that two men jumped multiple steps on the salary scale within one year — saying in a court filing that “the school board never approved such increases, and those increases are being corrected.”

Those boosts are mentioned in the new lawsuit, which says the increases “resulted in further wage disparities.” The plaintiffs “were never advanced more than one step on the salary scales in any year,” compared with “at least three male comparators” who advanced multiple steps.

Of the new lawsuit, a Central Bucks spokesperson said Tuesday that “the district is aware of the new case and is currently working with counsel.”

The new lawsuit — which seeks back pay for the female teachers, as well as an order requiring that the district pay women fairly going forward — alleges that the Central Bucks school board, which has been led by Democrats since late 2023, has participated in discriminatory hiring practices. It lists 34 men hired by the district since 2022 and the steps they were placed at, though not how many years of experience they had.

Susan Gibson, the school board’s president, did not respond to requests for comment.

A spokesperson for the Pennsylvania State Education Association, the union that represents Central Bucks teachers, declined to comment.