Female workers in California will get new tools to challenge gender-based wage gaps under legislation signed into law Tuesday that supporters say offers the strongest equal-pay protection in the nation.
Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown signed the measure while surrounded by women and girls at an event at Rosie the Riveter National Historical Park in Richmond, northeast of San Francisco.
"The stratification and the pay disparities in California and in America, probably in the world, are something that really eats away at our whole society," Brown said. He called the legislation a "milestone."
The bill by Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson, a Santa Barbara Democrat, expands California's existing equal pay law and goes further than federal law by placing the burden on the employer to prove a man's higher pay is based on factors other than gender.