Law firms, tech companies andaccounting giants have faced massive class action lawsuits by womenwho claim unequal treatment and pay.

Pay equity litigation came greater in focus in2018, and that trend is expected to continue into the new year.

The U.S. Supreme Court is expected soon to announce whether the justiceswill hear a dispute over whether employers can use an applicant's prior salary to justify paying menand women differently for the same jobs. State and localgovernments in 2018 took more steps to boost pay equality, posingmore compliance headaches for nationalcompanies.

“By and large companies want to do the right thing. Very fewsay, 'Yes, I want to pay someone more because he's a man,'” saidCheryl Pinarchick, a Fisher & Phillips partner in Boston whoco-chairs the firm's pay equity practice. “This debate has evolvedand the public has come forward saying this needs to beaddressed.”

Related: Here's how you can proactively address gender payinequity

Law firms, tech companies and accounting giants have facedmassive class action lawsuits by women who claim unequal treatmentand pay. Here's a snapshot of some of the developments from 2018and what's on deck.

Court cases are shaping equal-pay debates

Big rulings on pay equity marked 2018, and pending cases aresure to continue the debate into the new year.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, sitting enbanc, in April said employers can't use priorsalary to justify salary differences between men and women. Thecourt ruled against a California school district that's beingrepresented by a team from Jones Day.

The district in Fresno has appealed the decision to the U.S.Supreme Court, where the petition is set for the justices' Jan. 4private conference. At the high court, business advocates—led bythe U.S. Chamber of Commerce—are urging the justices to reject theNinth Circuit's decision.

“Employers large and small, in every region of the UnitedStates, have historically used prior salary as a metric to assess arange of matters, including the caliber and experience ofapplicants, the viability and competitiveness of their owncompensation packages, and, ultimately, the fairness of the wagesthey pay to employees,” lawyers for business groups, represented byJonathan Franklin of Norton Rose Fulbright, said inan amicus brief. “By placing wage-history data off limits foremployers within the nation's largest circuit, the court ofappeals' rule exacerbates a clear, acknowledged split regarding thelegal viability of that important practice.”

Other cases in the appeals courts have weighed the nuances ofthe federal law, including over what constitutes a comparableposition. “Whether work is substantially equal is a fact-specificinquiry, militating against dismissal of claims at the pleadingstage,” Cara Greene, a partner at Outten & Golden, said in arecent white paper.

Pay equity litigation has acutely focused on the tech sector. InJune, a federal judge in Seattle denied class status to a groupof Microsoft employees suing over alleged gender bias. InCalifornia, a state judge in March refused to derail gender payclass claims from a group of Google female employees. That samemonth, Uber agreed to pay $10 million tosettle a class discrimination suit that included claims of genderand racial compensation disparities.

Local government patchwork

Meanwhile, state and local governments have moved forward toadopt new laws confronting salary disparities, pay transparency andpaid leave. This trend is expected to continue.

Representing management-side interests, the HR PolicyAssociation and Littler Mendelson's Workplace Policy Institute saidin a report that 100 such bills wereintroduced in 2017 and 2018 in more than 40 jurisdictions and thatwave “shows no signs of subsiding in the future.”

The report warned: “The trend in statehouses and on citycouncils to supplement existing laws, which already prohibit paydiscrimination, is likely to result in unintended consequences,over regulation, and conflicting obligations. These added layers ofregulation, furthermore, come with little guidance and no guaranteethey will succeed in eliminating unfair pay disparities.”

The Trump administration scuttled an Obama-era initiative at theU.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to boost pay datacollection.

Some advice for employers

Pinarchick of Fisher & Phillips said any company that findsa pay discrepancy should take steps to assess it. “With more andmore cases filed on a class-wide basis, it's important foremployers to pay attention,” she said. Pinarchick said there'sgreater public support for class actions targeting compensationimbalances.

The Fisher & Phillips practice group has begun advisingclients to stop asking about salary history altogether, given themany state laws that ban the practice. Hiring should be approachedfrom a perspective of what is the value of the job as opposed tothe value of the person.

“It's a great time to take a step back and let's look at yourhiring practices and compensation practices and re-evaluate and seeif there are things you should be changing because of the new lawsand things you think about changing and limit liability under thenew laws and because your shareholders are demanding it,” shesaid.