An appeals court has upheld the first known judicial interpretation of Maine’s equal pay law by rejecting Acadia Hospital’s claim that market forces, not discriminatory intent, was the reason why it paid a female psychologist about half what it paid her male peers.

In a 2-1 ruling issued Thursday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit agreed that Acadia violated the state’s equal pay law by paying clinical psychologist Clare Mundell an hourly rate of $50 while paying men in her department $90 to $95 per hour.

In doing so, it upheld a February 2022 ruling from District Judge Lance Walker, who had ordered Acadia to pay Mundell, who is now in private practice, three times her back wages, or $181,000, for the pay disparity accrued during her 2-1/2 years of employment at Acadia.

“The evil redressed by (the Equal Pay Act) is decidedly the impact of unequal pay for comparable work, regardless of the employer’s motivation,” Walker wrote in his 2022 decision.

Acadia had argued that Judge Walker’s ruling was incorrect because Mundell had not proven its intent to discriminate. The hospital cited “market factors” as the reason for the pay disparity. The appellate court concluded the law does not require intent to prove pay discrimination.

In its argument, Acadia claimed that preventing an employer from basing pay on legitimate business interests, such as an employee’s ability to relocate or generate more business, would have devastating practical consequences for state businesses.

Under the equal pay law, however, the only allowable reasons for paying someone of the opposite sex a higher wage for the same kind of work are seniority, merit pay, and shift differentials. The state’s equal pay law has since been broadened to ban pay discrimination based on race.

“The only reasonable construction of the MEPL is that liability attaches with proof that employees of one sex are being paid less than employees of another sex for comparable work in comparable jobs, regardless of intent, unless an employer can demonstrate that the disparity stems from the second sentence’s three listed exceptions,” the appellate court ruling reads.

Mundell joined Acadia Hospital, an acute care and mental health facility, as a pool psychologist in November 2017. She became part of a team with four others responsible for psychological testing, consultation, individual and group psychotherapy, and crisis intervention.

On her 2019 performance evaluation, Mundell received a rating of 4.97 on a scale of 1-5. Her supervisor described her as “a dependable and reliable colleague who presents with a high level of professionalism,” according to Mundell’s original complaint.

Acadia Hospital was a part of Eastern Maine Healthcare Systems when Mundell was first hired. That organization was renamed Northern Light Health in 2018, not long after it merged with Mercy Health System, which operates Mercy Hospital in Portland, among other health care facilities.

A Northern Light spokeswoman, Suzanne Spruce, said Sunday the hospital was in the process of evaluating the appellate court ruling. She did not respond to questions about the pay gap between Mundell and her male colleagues or say if it persists today among pool psychologists.

But in 2022, at the time of Walker’s ruling, Spruce said Northern Light treated all its employees fairly.

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