Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act

Last semester, I took a course focusing on the Supreme Court of the United States. During this course, the professor mentioned a case entitled Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company. This case was particularly disturbing to me, not only as a woman, but as a member of the workforce.

The details of the case are as follows:

Lily Ledbetter was an employee of Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company for many years. As an Area Manager, a position primarily filled by men, she was an easy target for gender discrimination. Over time, salaries of the employees in the same position were incrementally increased, but men in the same position as Ms. Ledbetter were raised higher, creating a disparity of pay that was evident even when evaluating the salaries of employees with less seniority than Ms. Ledbetter. Since this act of discrimination did not involve Goodyear Tire denying Ms. Ledbetter promotions or other comparable measures of workplace equity, it was completely unknown to the her that she was the victim of discrimination. Goodyear made sure to keep the earnings of employees strictly confidential from one another. When Ms. Ledbetter finally discovered the systematic discrimination that was taking place, she filed a law suit against her employer.

After rulings in favor of Ms. Ledbetter in lower level Courts, the case made it all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States, where the Court decided that since Ms. Ledbetter had not filed her claim within 180 days of the discriminatory act she had missed the statutory limitation to sue. The 5-4 ruling was extremely controversial, and Justice Ginsberg was so appalled with the decision that she wrote a lengthy dissent. Justice Ginsberg cited the fact that Ms. Ledbetter was unaware of the act of discrimination during the statutory time-frame and called the Court's reading of the governing law "parsimonious". Justice Ginsberg suggested that the legislature take action to remedy this apparent mistake by Justices in the majority.

The Supreme Court of the United States basically set a precedent with this ruling that any person who does not file a claim of discrimination within 180 days of said act does not have any right to seek justice in Court. Obviously in Ms. Ledbetter's case this became an unfair requirement, especially since she was unaware of the acts as they were happening. The dissenting Justices argued that this would be an unfair requirement in all similar situations. Congress clearly agreed, and remedied the situation by passing the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act in 2009. The Feminist Law Professors Blog covered this event in a post written by David S. Cohen. Mr. Cohen remarks that it is not surprising that all Democratic Senators voted in favor of this bill, while only five Republican Senators voted to pass the measure (four of which were women).

The most disappointing portion of this scenario in my opinion is that political affiliation and ideology has such a huge impact on the laws of our country. A conservative leaning Court can change the whole way discrimination laws are applied, making it almost impossible to meet the requirements to win a lawsuit. It is not only a matter of the individual people and cases being impacted, but the precedent they set for future interpretation of our laws. Issuing a ruling that makes discrimination laws virtually unenforceable is just as bad as repealing them all together. Had that action been taken, perhaps the majority of the public would see that this is certainly cause for alarm.

A person cannot be required to take action before they know that they have been discriminated against. That would be like requiring someone to report a robbery before they even knew they had been stolen from. Luckily, Congress and President Obama made it their concern to right this wrong. The passing the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was a step in the right direction. Hopefully, this type of action will not be necessary in the future, but when it inevitably is, I only hope for such successful utilization of the checks and balances system.