Kate Gold 

For well over 25 years, Kate Gold has been litigating for employers in the entertainment, media, aerospace and other industries. She defends her clients in single-plaintiff discrimination cases and in wage-and-hour class actions regularly.

The last several years have been no different. “It’s really the same kind of litigation that I’ve been seeing,” she said.

But litigation comprises only about a third of her practice. Gold also conducts internal investigations for client companies and counsels them about trends and changes in the law. Those confidential and behind-the-scenes sides of her practice have been much more dynamic lately, she said.

For instance, pay equity and gender discrimination has been a rising current in her practice. “Those issues are very much on the minds of employees, employers and the agencies that enforce the civil rights laws,” Gold said.

Those issues also have been at the center of the independent investigations she has conducted for clients. Employees’ complaints about gender or sexual orientation discrimination or disparate treatment often encompass complaints about whether pay is comparable among genders as well.

California has a new law on pay equity and transparency, and Gold has been busy advising her clients about it. Concern about the law “has been particularly robust in the past year,” she said.

The law, which took effect this year, requires employers posting a job opening to disclose the relevant salary range. They also must disclose the salary ranges for current employees’ positions if the employees request.

“There’s no hiding the ball about what an employee gets paid,” Gold said. “That’s gotten a lot of attention.”

Several other states and some cities have similar laws, which means national employers must navigate related tensions and conflicts, she said. The laws bring “a lot of issues to the surface for employers,” she said. “They have to really look at salaries … [and] go through that examination process because they don’t want to be caught flat-footed.”

The new California law also requires companies with 100 or more workers to submit to the state detailed statistics each year about employee race, ethnicity, gender and pay per job category, among other information. “That was sort of a heavy lift for employers this year as well,” she said.

Gold said she has been kept busy advising clients about those legal changes and more.

Another source of work for her and her colleagues is California’s Civil Rights Department. When the department receives a complaint, it is required to conduct an investigation. For an employer, that can mean responding to a few dozen questions about the company’s practices. They turn to Gold for help.

“That’s a big part of my practice this year, too,” she said. “I’ve gotten a raft of those.”

So to understand the currents in employment law, Gold said, “Sometimes what’s going on out of the public eye can be a lot more informative about what’s top of mind for employers than the filed cases.”

— Don DeBenedictis