Denny v. Westfield State College

Leah Stern, Marilyn Denny, and Catherine Dower (faculty members) (plaintiffs) taught at Westfield State College (WSC) (defendant), governed by the Board of Regents of Higher Education (defendant). Believing that WSC paid them less than comparable male faculty members, the faculty members filed a Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII) sex-discrimination case. The parties stipulated that WSC teaching jobs were substantially equal and that different teachers may have different professional qualifications leading to legitimate pay differentials. The faculty members’ statistical expert, Dr. Arlene Ash, conducted a regression analysis considering several variables at once to determine their combined effect on salary. Ash analyzed male-only data to create a model that predicted 70 percent of the difference between male salaries based on factors such as seniority, departmental affiliation, and prior experience. Ash applied that model to comparable female professors to predict what their salaries should have been, although it did not include Distinguished Service Awards (DSAs), which disproportionately went to women. Ash found a statistically significant salary deficit for female faculty members. The salary differential not explained by nondiscriminatory variables could be inferred to be from sex discrimination. WSC’s expert, Dr. Ernest Kendall, also performed a regression analysis using a dummy-variable approach. Kendall’s own analysis revealed a statistically significant salary differential for five of the 11 years studied. Kendall argued that this corresponded to a period when WSC disproportionately recruited business administration and computer-science professors. Most of those hires were men, and salaries were higher because those disciplines compete with private industry for talent. The judge held a bench trial.