Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act Now in Congress

by Tula Connell, Jun 22, 2007

This just in: Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) and top Democrats just introduced the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. 

Congressional leaders are following up on their promise to take immediate legislative action after last month’s Supreme Court 5-4 decision requiring workers to file pay discrimination lawsuits within 180 days after the discrimination occurs. Prior to the May 30 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.

Said Miller, chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee:

Justice was denied to Ms. Ledbetter, and she now has to live the rest of her life with years of pay discrimination. We cannot allow this injustice to continue for other workers. The fact is that Ms. Ledbetter was discriminated against with nearly every paycheck she received. The Supreme Court told employers that they could escape responsibility by hiding their decision to discriminate and run out the clock.

Written by Bush appointee Justice Samuel Alito, the High Court’s decision dismissed a suit by Lilly Ledbetter, an employee for 19 years at a Goodyear tire plant in Gadsden, Ala., who said she was paid less than her male counterparts. The court said she did not file her lawsuit within 180 days after the discrimination occurred, as required by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. A jury originally awarded Ledbetter more than $3.5 million because it found that gender discrimination led to her being paid less.  

When Ledbetter retired in 1999 after nearly 20 years as a supervisor, she was making $44,724 a year. But as she told a House committee June 13, 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. 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.

In her dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, the only woman on the Supreme Court,  took the unusual step of reading her opinion aloud to the court. She noted how in the original trial, the jury heard testimony that a supervisor who evaluated Ledbetter in 1997—an evaluation that led to denying her a pay raise—was “openly biased against women.” Further, Ginsberg wrote:

And two women who had previously worked as managers at the plant told the jury they had been subject to pervasive discrimination and were paid less than their male counterparts. One was paid less than the men she supervised….Ledbetter herself testified about the discriminatory animus conveyed to her by plant officials. Toward the end of her career, for instance, the plant manager told Ledbetter that the “plant did not need women, that [women] didn’t help it, [and] caused problems.”

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