## Facts

- Kansas Unified School District No. 501 reorganized due to budget constraints and eliminated certain positions.
- Dwight L. Almond III and Kevin C. Weems, longtime district employees, were told their higher-paying positions would be eliminated but they could accept lower-paying jobs to avoid termination.
- Almond accepted a lower-paying janitorial job; the district agreed in writing to delay his pay reduction for two years.
- Weems likewise accepted a lower-paying position rather than be laid off.
- The challenged pay-setting decisions occurred several years before either employee filed an administrative charge.
- Both employees filed administrative charges in 2006, alleging age-based discrimination under the ADEA and related law.
- They later argued the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 made their claims timely because each paycheck reflected an unlawful compensation decision.

## Issues

1. Whether the employees’ allegations qualified as “discrimination in compensation” under the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, such that each paycheck restarted the filing period.
2. If not, whether the limitations period ran from the discrete reassignment/pay-reduction decisions when made and communicated, rather than from later paychecks.

## Decision

- The Tenth Circuit affirmed dismissal of the employees’ claims as untimely.
- The court held the Ledbetter Act did not apply because the employees did not allege they were paid less than similarly situated coworkers for the same work.
- Because the claims challenged discrete reassignment/demotion decisions with downstream pay effects, the filing period began when those decisions were made and communicated.
- The employees’ 2006 administrative charges were filed years after accrual and were time-barred.

## Legal Principles

- The Ledbetter Act’s paycheck-accrual rule applies to “discrimination in compensation” claims understood as unequal pay for equal work relative to similarly situated employees.
- Adverse employment actions that affect pay (such as reassignments or demotions to lower-paying positions) are generally treated as discrete acts; their limitations period begins when the decision is made and communicated.
- Later paychecks that reflect the effects of a past discrete act do not, by themselves, restart the limitations period when the claim is not an unequal-pay-for-equal-work compensation claim.
- ADEA plaintiffs must timely file an administrative charge within the statutory period after the alleged unlawful employment practice; failure to do so bars the action.

## Conclusion

Because the employees alleged age-motivated placement into lower-paying jobs—not unequal pay compared to similarly situated coworkers—the Ledbetter Act did not extend the filing period, and their claims accrued when the reassignment and pay-reduction decisions were made and communicated, rendering the 2006 charges untimely.


Almond v. Unified Sch. Dist. No. 501, 665 F.3d 1174 (10th Cir. 2011)