A New Frontier: Applying Evolving National Pay Equity Trends to Kansas's Statute

In June 2016, an employee of a restaurant called Pizza Studio in Kansas City, Kansas, asked why she was earning twenty-five cents less than her friend, a male coworker. Seventeen-year-old Jensen Walcott discussed her $8 per hour salary with Jake Reed, also seventeen, who earned $8.25 per hour but had the same responsibilities and experience level as Walcott. Walcott spoke with a manager, who fired her and cited a company policy prohibiting wage discussions as the rationale. Though the restaurant eventually fired the manager and apologized, Walcott’s story caught the eye of local and national media. She and Reed became the focus of policy arguments during the 2016 presidential election. As Walcott’s story gained national attention, it cast Kansas’s current pay equity statute into stark relief. The law, in existence for 39 years, has fallen behind the trend of other states’ legislation that is developing a different approach to pay equity laws nationwide. Subsequently, the pay gap between men and women in Kansas has persisted. The state’s