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House Set to Vote on Ledbetter Fair Pay Bill; Bush Veto Looms |
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Today the U.S. House of Representatives is expected to send a message to President Bush: “We believe in fair pay. Do you?” Bush answered that question last week, when he threatened to veto the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. Maybe after sleeping on it over the weekend, he’s changed his mind. Don’t hold your breath.
(We will bring you the vote as soon as we hear.)
Ledbetter worked for two decades at a Goodyear tire plant in Alabama where she was paid less than men doing the same work as she was. But she didn’t find out how much less until years into her career and so could not file a pay-discrimination lawsuit until 1998. A jury awarded her $3.8 million, but in May the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Ledbetter and tossed out the pay-discrimination verdict, saying she had waited too long to file suit.
In a 5-4 decision, the court said she should have filed her pay-discrimination suit within 180 days of her first short paycheck–even though it took her years to discover the pay gap and longer to dig up the proof.
The bill the House is voting on today would strengthen equal pay laws and clarify that every paycheck or other compensation resulting in whole or part from an earlier discriminatory pay decision constitutes a violation of the Civil Rights Act. As long as workers file their charges within 180 days of a discriminatory paycheck, their charges would be considered timely.
Debate on the bill began last night, and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) lambasted Bush’s veto threat as
…just further evidence that this president does not stand on the side of American workers.
Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) says:
This legislation can be summed up in one word: fairness. And what better sums up the idea of equal pay for equal work?
In a column published yesterday in the Christian Science Monitor, Ledbetter writes:
Substitute any category of worker for women–seniors, Latinos, gays, disabled, Muslim etc.–and you can see the impact that results from the court gutting this key civil rights protection.
Unless Congress rights this wrong, employers can legally get away with discrimination so long as they can make it to day 181.
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To me, the deeper and more troubling facet of this Supreme Court
term is the consistant 5-4 divide on the court with only one exception, and it was 4-4-1. The “vast right wing conspiracy” is firmly in place, and it’s called “Roberts Court.” The New Deal, and all its attendant issues are in danger if this gang of scalawags isn’t somehow broken up.