EEOC v. LeachGarner — $2.8 Million Sex/Pay Discrimination Consent Decree (E.D. Mass.)

us-fed Jun 26, 2026 Primary source

What just shifted

What this adds: A $2.8 million EEOC consent decree against a Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary establishes that steering female manufacturing workers into lower-paid job categories — while telling staffing agencies to prefer male candidates for higher-paid openings — is Title VII sex discrimination and an Equal Pay Act violation, even when the lower-paid work is nominally a different job title.

What this puts in question: Whether employers in manufacturing and production environments that sort workers by gender into job categories with different pay bands have conducted a neutral review of whether those assignments are driven by production requirements or by historical sex stereotyping.

What clients should weigh

·If your facility routes female workers to one line and male workers to another — even if both lines require no prior experience — does your job-assignment process rest on documented production criteria or on informal assumptions about who does which work?

·When you communicate hiring preferences to staffing agencies, are those preferences facially neutral? Telling an agency you prefer male candidates for a position is an EEOC target: does your agency communication log reflect preferences stated in job-performance terms only?

·A $2.8 million settlement for a single facility is large enough to exceed most mid-size manufacturers' litigation reserves. If an EEOC charge arrived today, how long would it take you to produce the pay data, assignment records, and staffing agency communications for the past three years?

·This addresses sex-based job channeling and pay disparity under Title VII and the Equal Pay Act. It does not reach OFCCP audit exposure for federal contractors, state equal-pay statutes with broader comparator definitions, or individual managers' liability under state law.

EEOC v. LeachGarner, Inc. d/b/a LeachGarner, a Berkshire Hathaway Company, No. 23-cv-11014 (D. Mass. 2026)

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