Colorado's Equal Pay for Equal Work Act effective January 2021

Among the most significant employment-related bills passed by the Colorado General Assembly during its 2019 legislative session was Colorado's new Equal Pay for Equal Work Act (EPEWA). The Act, which will go into effect January 1, 2021, for all public and private employers in Colorado, imposes equal pay obligations extending beyond those of the federal Equal Pay Act (EPA). The EPEWA is intended to "ensure that employees with similar job duties are paid the same wage rate regardless of sex" and reflects the Colorado General Assembly's response to findings that the wage gap between men and women has long persisted even after the federal EPA attempted to eliminate it nearly 60 years ago.

Why was the EPEWA enacted?

Many employee organizations have long contended that despite passage of the federal EPA in 1963 ― which was intended to remedy pay disparities based on sex a year before the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 ― unlawful pay disparities have nonetheless persisted. Many have attributed the persistence to the federal EPA's catch-all provision permitting wage disparities based on any "factors other than sex," which advocates contend is too vague and permits wage disparities for too many reasons.