On March 27, 2014, the New Jersey Senate passed the Unfair Wage Recovery Act (S. 783), which provides that each discriminatory paycheck an employee receives would restart the running of a new statute of limitations period for a pay discrimination claim brought under the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination. A similar bill is pending in the state Assembly.
We previously posted ( here and here) about a prior version of this bill that was introduced in the 2012-2013 legislative session. This current version of the bill was reintroduced to the state Senate in January 2014.
If passed into law, the Unfair Wage Recovery Act would bring New Jersey law into conformity with the federal Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 ("the Ledbetter Act"). The Ledbetter Act applies to pay discrimination claims brought under federal anti-discrimination laws.
The Unfair Wage Recovery Act would not affect a court's authority to apply the "continuing violation" doctrine and is not intended to weaken or eliminate any potential equitable application of the "discovery rule."
Originally published on the Employer's Law Blog
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