This is not an official government website.
© 2026 PLEJ LC. All rights reserved.
Congressional Daily Record
This section captures a floor statement or debate entry. It mentions members such as Eleanor Holmes Norton. Extensions of Remarks are statements submitted for the official record, even if they were not spoken live on the floor.
Issued
May 4, 2026
house side of the record
People
1
Linked members mentioned in this section
Legislation
0
No linked legislation in this section
Committees
0
No linked committees in this section
Senate Holds
0
No hold activity linked here
Source Document
Connected Data
People mentioned
1 Helpful Term
Extensions of Remarks
Material lawmakers submit for the official record even when it was not spoken live on the floor.
Source Control
Reader mode is for comprehension. The linked government PDF is the official published source.
Download official Extensions PDFReturn to issue contextHON. ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON
of the district of columbia
in the house of representatives
Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, today, I introduce the Fair Pay Act of 2026. This bill would require that if men and women are doing comparable work, they must be paid comparable wages. The Equal Pay Act of 1963 (EPA), the first of the great civil rights statutes of the 1960s, has grown creaky with age and needs updating to reflect the new workforce, in which women work as much as men.
As the first woman to chair the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, where I enforced the EPA, I introduce this bill on behalf of the average female worker, who is often first steered to, and then locked into, jobs with wages that are deeply influenced by the gender of individuals who have traditionally held such jobs. The pay disparity most women face today stems mainly from the segregation of women and men in different jobs and women in female-dominated jobs being paid systematically less. For example, if a woman is an emergency services operator, a female-dominated profession, she should not be paid less than a fire dispatcher, a male-dominated profession, simply because each of these jobs has been dominated by one gender. We need more aggressive strategies to break through the societal barriers present throughout history, as well as employer-steering based on gender, which is as old as paid employment itself.
Congress in 2003, when female custodians in the House and Senate won an EPA case after showing that female employees were paid a dollar less per hour for doing the same or similar work as male employees. Had those women not been represented by their union, they would have had an almost impossible task in using the rules for bringing and sustaining an EPA class action lawsuit.
This bill would not change the legal burden. Under this bill, as under the EPA, the burden would be on the plaintiff to prove discrimination. The plaintiff must show that the reason for the disparate treatment is gender discrimination, not legitimate market factors. Remedies to achieve comparable pay for men and women are not radical or unprecedented. State governments, in red and blue states alike, have shown that it is possible to eliminate the part of the pay gap that is due to job-steering. Many state governments have adjusted wages for female-dominated professions, raising pay for teachers, nurses, clerical workers, librarians and other female-dominated jobs that paid less than comparable male-dominated jobs. Minnesota, for example, implemented a pay equity plan when it found that traditionally female jobs paid 20 percent less than comparable traditionally male jobs. There may well be some portion of the gender wage gap that is traceable to market factors, but states have shown that you can tackle the gender discrimination-based wage gap without interfering in the market system. States generally have closed the wage gap over a period of four to five years at a one-time cost of no more than three to four percent of payroll.
Adam and Eve. To dislodge such deep-seated and pervasive treatment, we must go to the source, the traditionally female occupations, where pay is linked with gender and always has been.
I urge my colleagues to support this bill.