Current case
On July 22, 2026, a unanimous federal jury in Portland found Nike, Inc. liable on all counts for sex discrimination in pay and promotions against our client, Heather Hender. The jury awarded $19,739.52 in backpay and $15 million in punitive damages. Byron Goldstein of Goldstein Browne tried the case for Heather, together with co-counsel Laura Salerno Owens of Markowitz Herbold PC and Brian Denlinger and Erika Smolyar of Ackermann & Tilajef, P.C. We are now working to extend that remedy to the roughly 5,000 other women in the proposed class through an appeal of the denial of class certification to the Ninth Circuit.
In August 2018, in the wake of the New York Times exposé on Nike’s “boys’ club” culture, our clients sued Nike in federal court in Oregon. The operative First Amended Class and Collective Action Complaint in Cahill v. Nike, Inc., No. 3:18-cv-01477 (D. Or.), alleges that Nike violated the federal Equal Pay Act, Title VII, the Oregon Equal Pay Act, and ORS 659A.030 by paying women less than men and promoting them more slowly. The complaint challenges practices that applied across Nike’s Beaverton headquarters: starting pay set on the basis of prior salary history, a forced ranking system that drove raises, bonuses, and equity, budgets that shortchanged women, and the channeling of women into positions Nike valued less, all in a workplace hostile to women. The proposed class consists of women who worked at Nike headquarters in salaried, corporate positions below Vice-President.
In November 2022, a magistrate judge recommended denying class certification, and in March 2023 the district court adopted that recommendation, ruling that the women’s claims had to proceed individually. In October 2025, the team sought leave to file a renewed motion for class certification supported by more than 800 pages of evidence, including additional detail about the “Starfish” surveys and about Nike’s practice of using prior salaries to set women’s starting pay. In January 2026, the district court denied leave to file the renewed motion on procedural grounds, without reaching the new evidence. We intend to appeal the denial of class certification to the Ninth Circuit so that the type of remedy Heather obtained can reach the other women at Nike who were subjected to the same discriminatory pay and promotion practices.
Heather’s individual claims proceeded to a six-day trial in July 2026. After a little more than a day of deliberations, the jury found Nike liable on every count. The jury found that Nike willfully violated the federal Equal Pay Act when it paid Heather, an engineer at Nike headquarters from 2015 to 2020, less than her male peers, and that Nike discriminated against her in pay and promotions in violation of Title VII, the Oregon Equal Pay Act, and ORS 659A.030. It awarded $19,739.52 in backpay, the maximum available on the verdict form, along with $7.5 million in punitive damages under Title VII and $7.5 million under Oregon law. One claim remains before the district court: whether Nike’s pay and bonus policies had a disparate impact on women. You can read more about the trial and the verdict here.
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