New Jersey Employment Lawyer Blog

Employment lawyers in New Jersey better watch this case. The New Jersey Supreme Court opened its term on Monday with an employment law case that may decide whether pay discrimination claims under New Jersey law will be held to the strict timing that federal law now requires. In Alexander et al. v. Seton Hall University, A-87-09, three tenured Seton Hall professors are asking the Court to apply the "continuing violation" rule and reinstate their employment law claims under the Law Against Discrimination, which were dismissed as time-barred. The trial court and the New Jerey Appellate Division had followed the U.S. Supreme Court's controversial ruling in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., 550 U.S. 618 (2007), in which a 5-4 majority held that Title VII pay discrimination claims must be filed within 180 days of the discriminatory pay decision. By dint of Ledbetter, an LAD claim has to be filed within two years of such a decision, the lower courts held.