William D. Ruffin v. County of Los Angeles, Sherman A. Jones v. County of Los Angeles, David L. Ellis v. County of Los Angeles

The appellants are 128 named corrections officers, all male, employed by the appellees, the Los Angeles County (California) Sheriff and the County of Los Angeles (hereinafter the “County”). They appeal the summary judgment dismissal of their employment discrimination claims against the County.

Specifically, the corrections officers claimed that employment practices of the County violated both Title VII of the Equal Employment Opportunity Act (42 U.S.C. § 2000e) and the Equal Pay Act ( 29 U.S.C. § 206 (d)) because female deputy sheriffs who are assigned to work in County detention facilities are compensated at a higher rate of pay than are corrections officers, all of whom are male. Male corrections officers, so appellants contend, perform tasks involving essentially equal skill, effort, and responsibility as those performed by female deputies who work in the same facilities.

We affirm.

I.

The undisputed facts are as follows:

At the time the suit was instituted, the County employed more than 5,400 deputy sheriffs, and 591 of those were female. On the total number of deputy sheriffs, 1,001 were assigned to the Custody Division of the Sheriff’s Department, the division…