Pay Justice

Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be federal judges. The job might come with employment security and prestige, but according to some judges and a jurists group, the pay isn't close to competitive compared to what private sector lawyers are pulling down. And the gap could continue to widen unless structural problems are fixed.

There's no question that attorney general nominee Eric Holder will feel the pinch when his annual salary falls from $2.1 million in private practice to $196,700 once he's confirmed. Federal trial judges coming in from the private sector will be squeezed even further. Their salaries are $169,300, while appellate judges do a little better, starting at $179,500. Chief Justice John Roberts maxes out the appellate pay scale at $217,400.

Lower salaries are logical for organizations that don't have the luxury of billing corporate clients by the hour. But it makes less sense that there hasn't been a significant pay raise for federal judges in almost 20 years. A proposal for a 30 percent hike died in Congress in 2008, and lawmakers didn't approve a much smaller cost-of-living adjustment for federal judges either. That makes judges the only federal employees who won't get such a raise.

Administrative law judges face a different plight; their pay caps mean that many cannot receive locality pay adjustments. In a set of recommendations to President-elect Barack Obama's transition team, the Federal Administrative Law Judges Conference noted that all the ALJs in two pay categories already have reached the ceiling, blocking them from receiving locality pay. Administrative law judges in a third pay category will reach the limit in 2009.

Pay for administrative judges is limited in other ways. They cannot be subject to a pay-for-performance system, and in fact do not face performance evaluations. They also are not eligible for bonuses.

Those restrictions, at least, have some basis in ethics. They are intended to ensure that judges aren't improperly influenced by the prospect of a higher paycheck.

But locality pay is the main tool the federal government has to combat the pay gap. In a profession like law, where private sector salaries have grown rapidly, it may be especially tempting for talented judges in the early or middle stages of their careers to cash out on their experience and return to private firms.

While the federal government cannot offer competing salaries, it might help for judges to know that their pay will not hit a permanent wall. The ALJ group has asked that locality payments be exempted from the salary caps to help correct for the overall imbalance.

The locality pay system itself has critics, though. That gives the Obama administration a lot to think about if it wants to take that route to eliminate -- or at least mitigate -- the pay gap.