## Facts

- The Secretary of Labor sued a hospital under the Equal Pay Act, alleging sex-based wage discrimination between male “orderlies” and female “nurses’ aides.”
- The hospital hired only men as orderlies and only women as aides, and paid orderlies more than aides.
- Orderlies and aides performed very similar basic patient-care duties and were largely interchangeable in routine care.
- The district court found both jobs involved the same type of patient-care work but emphasized differences in (1) the proportion of routine tasks, (2) tasks aides performed that orderlies did not, and (3) “extra tasks” orderlies performed that aides did not.
- One “extra task” was catheterizing male patients; this occurred no more than once or twice per week and did not require specialized skill beyond reasonable dexterity.
- The district court dismissed the action, concluding the Secretary failed to prove the jobs were “substantially equal.”
- The Secretary appealed.

## Issues

1. Whether the hospital’s orderlies and nurses’ aides performed “equal work” requiring substantially equal skill, effort, and responsibility under the Equal Pay Act, despite differences in some tasks.
2. Whether relatively minor, infrequent, or marginal “extra tasks” assigned to a higher-paid, sex-segregated job classification defeat an Equal Pay Act claim.

## Decision

- The Fourth Circuit reversed the dismissal and remanded with instructions to enter judgment for the Secretary.
- The court held the district court used an incorrect legal standard by assigning undue weight to task differences instead of assessing overall equivalence in skill, effort, and responsibility.
- On the largely undisputed record, the jobs were substantially equal and the wage differential violated the Equal Pay Act.

## Legal Principles

- “Equal work” under the Equal Pay Act means substantially equal work, evaluated by overall skill, effort, and responsibility under similar working conditions; exact identity of tasks is not required.
- Minor, incidental, or infrequently performed differences in duties do not justify a sex-based wage differential when the core jobs are materially the same.
- Courts must examine actual job content and performance rather than job titles or formal descriptions.
- Application of the Act must avoid (1) revaluing pay systems based on abstract notions of worth and (2) accepting fine-grained job distinctions that would permit evasion of the statute.

## Conclusion

The Fourth Circuit concluded that male orderlies and female nurses’ aides performed substantially equal patient-care work, and that limited “extra tasks” such as occasional male catheterizations did not warrant higher wages for the male-only classification; the case was remanded for entry of judgment for the Secretary under the Equal Pay Act.


Brennan v. Prince William Hosp. Corp., 503 F.2d 282 (4th Cir. 1974)