Equal work, unequal pay

Victims of pay discrimination got no help from the Supreme Court this year. That's why Congress must act.

from the July 31, 2007 edition

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Then, in the strangest cut of all, the Supreme Court narrowly interpreted Title VII, completely out of line with legal precedent and sided with Goodyear, arguing that I had filed the complaint too late since Title VII requires employees to file within 180 days of "the alleged unlawful employment practice."

The majority ruling apparently ignored the fact that Goodyear was still underpaying me when I filed the suit. Instead, calculating the time based on the date I received the first discriminatory paycheck, years in the past, it ruled that I had missed the deadline for redress.

In her dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, the Supreme Court's only woman, took the unusual step of reading her opinion aloud. She noted that the original jury heard testimony that a supervisor who evaluated me in 1997 – an evaluation that led to denying me a pay raise – was "openly biased against women." She wrote: "Toward the end of her career ... the plant manager told Ledbetter that the "plant did not need women, that [women] didn't help it, [and] caused problems."

Substitute any category of work-er for "women" – seniors, Latinos, gays, disabled, Muslims, etc. – and you can see the impact that results from the court gutting this key civil rights protection.

While workers' and civil rights groups are lauding the Ledbetter Act, the bill has met opposition from the pro-business lobby. Neal Mellon from the US Chamber of Commerce said that many business owners didn't want to open themselves up to the liability of employees filing suits "decades later." My story shows that filing these suits decades after the initial discriminatory paycheck is often unavoidable. Each paycheck I received was an act of discrimination, regardless of the amount of time that passed.

How many workers know what their colleagues make? Do you? I certainly didn't until years after the fact. Indeed, one-third of private sector employers bar employees from discussing their wages with co-workers.

Unless Congress rights this wrong, employers can legally get away with discrimination so long as they can make it to day 181.

• Lilly Ledbetter, a volunteer and mother of two, has been married for 51 years.

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