Felicia Davis 

These days, Felicia Davis’s practice primarily involves representing employers hit with litigation alleging pay inequality based on gender or race.

Pay equity is “definitely an exciting area of the law,” she said, one that has produced a great deal of litigation and legislation.

“I think of pay equity as the second wave of #MeToo,” Davis added. “There’s a lot of single plaintiff litigation, but also class litigation, as well as government investigations into employers’ pay practices.”

Davis, who also chairs her firm’s employment law department in L.A., is leading the team now defending Disney in what appears to be the largest putative pay discrimination class action filed in California. Nine female employees of various Disney-related companies have sued the entertainment giant under the California Fair Pay Act on behalf of “all women employed full-time in California by Disney at any time from April 1, 2015,” to the present. Rasmussen v. The Walt Disney Co., 19STCV10974 (L.A. Super. Ct., filed April 2, 2019).

A class certification hearing is set for November. But Davis said there are defenses. The suit targets “many different employers in California. And we disagree with that,” she said.

In March this year, she defeated certification of a class action filed in Oregon against Nike. It claims the company underpaid and under-promoted women employees and channeled them into lower-level positions. Cahill v. Nike, Inc., 3:18-cv-01477 (D. Ore., filed Aug. 9, 2018).

Davis and her team submitted many declarations from employees “who said … they had never experienced the conduct that the plaintiffs were alleging” and that many supervisors were involved in making pay and promotion decisions. There was “nothing in common that would bind the class together,” she said.

Davis also represents Google in a trio of pay-equity cases. Last October, a $118 million settlement was approved that alleged gender discrimination and violation of California’s Equal Pay Act on behalf of thousands of Google female employees. Ellis v. Google LLC, CGC-17-561299 (S.F. Super. Ct., filed Sept. 14, 2017).

She is defending the company in a putative class action that alleges discrimination in pay, hiring, promotion and other areas on behalf of all Black or part Black applicants and employees nationwide. “It is quite broad,” Davis said. She is awaiting a ruling on the company’s summary judgment motion filed in October. Curley v. Google LLC, 3:22-cv-01735 (N.D. Cal., filed March 18, 2022).

The third Google case is a PAGA-only lawsuit. It alleges race discrimination in pay on behalf of all non-white Google employees in California. The case appears to be one of the few PAGA cases filed under California’s Equal Pay Act. Cantu v. Google LLC, 21CV392049 (Sta. Clara Super. Ct., filed Dec. 8, 2021).

In addition to litigation, Davis advises companies on pay equity issues and on how to fix any problems. “Most employers really want to get this right,” she said.

— Don DeBenedictis