Democratic House Moves Fast on Anti-Worker Supreme Court Ruling

by Mike Hall, Jun 13, 2007

Last month when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Lilly Ledbetter—who was paid less than male workers doing the same job—had waited too long to file a pay discrimination suit, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg issued a dissenting opinion in which she said Congress should act to ensure workers’ sufficient access to redress for pay discrimination Yesterday, the U.S. House Education and Labor Committee acted on Ginsburg’s advice.

Committee Chairman George Miller (D-Calif.) says the hearing was the first step in congressional action toward reversing the court’s ruling (see video).

With the Ledbetter decisions, the court is telling employers that to escape responsibility, all they need to do is keep their discrimination hidden and run out the clock. As Justice [Ruth Bader] Ginsburg suggested, the ball has now fallen into Congress’ court. And make no mistake—Congress intends to act to correct the Supreme Court’s grievous insult to American workers.

When Ledbetter retired in 1999 after nearly 20 years as a supervisor at Goodyear’s Gadsden, Ala., tire plant, she was making $44,724 a year. But as she told the committee yesterday, the lowest-paid male in the same job was earning $51,432 a year, while the highest-paid man doing the same work was earning $62,832 annually.

She told the committee she had long suspected she was being paid less than the men in the same job, but until she received two anonymous packages showing the differing pay rates, she had no hard evidence of the pay discrimination. Armed with the data, she filed a pay discrimination lawsuit and in 1998, a jury found Goodyear had discriminated against her on the basis of her gender and awarded her back pay and more than $3 million in damages. (Click here for a clip of the hearing on Daily Kos.)

The court’s 5-4 decision took it all away. The ruling didn’t say no pay discrimination occurred. Instead, the majority ruled that Ledbetter just waited too long to file a discrimination claim. The court said under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, she should have filed a complaint within 180 days of receiving her first discriminatory paycheck, even though it took her years to realize and then find proof she was being paid less than the men. Says Ledbetter:

They said I should have complained every time I got a smaller raise than the men, even if I didn’t know what the men were getting paid and even if I had no way to prove that the decisions was discrimination. They said that once the 180 days passes after the pay decisions is made, the worker is stuck with unequal pay for equal work under Title VII for the rest of her career and there is nothing illegal about that under the statute.

Before the ruling, many courts allowed workers to sue for pay discrimination years after the initial discrimination because the courts considered each new paycheck a new discriminatory act. Says Miller:

Discrimination does not just occur when the initial decision to discriminate is made. You may not know when the decision to discriminate against you was made. You may not recognize it when it is made.

Discrimination occurs both when an employer decides to discriminate and then when the employer actually discriminates by, for example, paying you less because you are a woman, or African American, or older than the other employees.

Ms. Ledbetter was discriminated against with nearly every paycheck she received.

Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, says the court’s decision goes beyond pay discrimination based on sex.

It is also important to understand that this decisions is part of the court’s recent pattern of limiting both access to the courts and remedies available to victims of discrimination. The court’s decisions have weakened the basic protections in ways that Congress never intended.

For opponents of civil rights, there is no need to repeal Title VII. Instead you can substantially weaken its protections by chipping away at bedrock interpretations. Or instead you can make it difficult or impossible for plaintiffs to bring and win employment discrimination cases. Or if you make the remedies meaningless.

In her case, and for other discrimination victims, Ledbetter told the committee that under the court’s ruling, companies get off the hook for more than just the discriminatory paychecks, but pension checks, too.

According to the Court, if you don’t figure things out right away, the company can treat you like a second-class citizen for the rest of your career. That isn’t right.

The truth is Goodyear continues to treat me like a second class worker to this day, because my pension and Social Security is based on the amount I earned while working there. Goodyear gets to keep my extra pension as a reward for breaking the law.

Click here to read the full testimony and for a  link to an archived webcast of the hearing.

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