Apple is facing a class action lawsuit alleging that the company has been systematically underpaying female employees compared to their male counterparts over a four-year period.
The lawsuit, filed in California state court by two female Apple employees, Justina Jong and Amina Salgado, accuses Apple of violating California’s Equal Pay Act, noting that Apple determined applicants’ previous salaries to set pay levels and that this “perpetuated historic pay disparities between men and women.”
The lawsuit covers more than 12,000 current and former female employees in various departments, including engineering, marketing, and AppleCare.
“Apple’s policy and practice of collecting such information about pay expectations and using that information to set starting salaries has had a disparate impact on women, and Apple’s failure to pay women and men equal wages for performing substantially similar work is simply not justified under the law,” Joe Sellers, a lawyer at Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC who represents the employees, said.
The lawsuit also claims that Apple’s performance evaluation system is biassed against women, with men receiving higher scores on subjective metrics like teamwork and leadership, leading to lower bonuses and pay increases for female employees.
“Apple’s performance evaluation system is biassed against women because for scored categories such as teamwork and leadership, men are rewarded and women are penalised for the same behaviours. Because performance evaluation scores have a relationship to bonuses, Restricted stock Units (RSUs), and pay increases at Apple, Apple’s biassed performance evaluation system has a disparate impact on women,” the plaintiffs stated.
The class action lawsuit seeks compensation for damages and “declaratory relief,” as well as repayment for lost earnings and benefits resulting from the alleged inconsistencies by Apple.
Apple did not respond to a request for comment regarding the lawsuit.
Apple is not the first tech company to encounter legal challenges regarding gender discrimination. In 2022, Google paid $118 million to settle a gender discrimination case that included around 15,500 women. Earlier this year, Oracle agreed to pay $25 million for reportedly underpaying 4,000 female employees in California.