On February 6, 2020, the Third Circuit overturned a trial court ruling and upheld, against a First Amendment challenge, a Philadelphia ordinance that prohibits employers from asking job applicants about their past salaries. The decision was a setback for WLF, which had argued in an amicus brief that the First Amendment prohibits the City from restricting prospective employers’ speech without ample evidence that wage-history inquiries perpetuate salary discrimination against women and racial minorities, and that a ban on such inquiries would reduce discrimination. WLF noted that the City’s speech restriction is both content-based (it applies to only one subject, pay history) and speaker-based (it applies only to employers and to no other category of speaker). In a 67-page opinion, the appeals court held that the City’s ban on pay-history inquiries satisfies intermediate scrutiny under Central Hudson.
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