Alexander v. Seton Hall University

Paula Alexander, Joan Coll, and Cheryl Thompson-Sard (the professors) (plaintiffs) were female professors at Seton Hall University (defendant). In 2005, the professors obtained a Seton Hall report detailing the salaries of its faculty members, including the salary breakdown by gender. The report revealed a pattern of disparate compensation on the basis of gender. The report also revealed that younger and newer faculty received higher salaries than older, longer-term faculty members. The report revealed that Alexander and Coll received a lower salary than younger, male colleagues of the same rank. The professors sued Seton Hall under New Jersey’s Law Against Discrimination (LAD), alleging that they were paid unequal wages compared to male and younger colleagues. The trial court noted that LAD had a two-year statute of limitations and that more than two years had passed since the allegedly discriminatory payment decisions were made. Although the professors received disparate pay in the two years prior to filing the complaint, the court held that the statute of limitations began to run at the time the payment decisions were made and that, therefore, the professors’ complaint was not within the statute-of-limitations period. The court specified that its analysis was based on a recent decision of the United States Supreme Court concerning statutory construction of the statute-of-limitations clause in a federal antidiscrimination statute. The appeals court affirmed, and the professors appealed, arguing that each discriminatory payment was a continuation of the original discriminatory payment decision, constituting an ongoing violation that continued to the present and included all unequal payments.