Yovino v. Rizo

In Yovino v. Rizo, the U.S. Supreme Court addressed a procedural question from a long-running equal pay dispute. Aileen Rizo, a math consultant, sued the Fresno County Office of Education, arguing its policy of basing starting salaries solely on prior pay perpetuated gender-based wage discrimination in violation of the federal Equal Pay Act. A panel of the Ninth Circuit ruled in her favor, and the en banc court later reached the same conclusion. The critical vote in the en banc decision was cast by Judge Stephen Reinhardt, who had died eleven days before the opinion was formally published. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to determine whether a deceased judge’s vote could be counted. In a unanimous per curiam decision issued on February 25, 2019, the Court held that federal judges must be alive at the time a decision is rendered, vacated the Ninth Circuit’s judgment, and remanded the case for further proceedings, leaving the underlying pay equity question unresolved.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously that counting the vote of a judge who died before the opinion was issued was impermissible. It vacated the Ninth Circuit’s en banc judgment and remanded the case for further proceedings consistent with its holding that only judges living at the time of decision may participate.

The central dispute was whether the Ninth Circuit’s en banc decision was constitutionally valid when the decisive vote was cast by Judge Stephen Reinhardt, who passed away before the opinion was issued. The case questioned the fundamental rule that a federal judge must be alive at the time a court’s judgment is rendered, and whether counting a deceased judge’s vote contravenes that rule.

The decision reaffirmed a bedrock procedural principle: a judge must be alive when an opinion is released for their vote to count. It drew sharp attention to judicial ethics and internal court procedures, particularly the handling of votes after a judge’s death. The ruling delayed a definitive answer on whether considering prior salary violates the Equal Pay Act, prolonging uncertainty for employers and equal pay advocates. The case highlighted the intersection of judicial administration and substantive civil rights law, and encouraged renewed debate over salary history bans in employment legislation.