Imagine you’re the only female supervisor in a factory dominated by men. You work there for 19 years, getting incremental pay raises. But then, at the end of your career, you realize that the lowest- paid male manager is making a whole lot more money than you are for doing the same job – about $6,500 a year more.
If you’re Lilly Ledbetter, a supervisor at the Goodyear Tire and Rubber plant in Gadsden, Ala., you pursue a federal claim and prove to a jury that you were a victim of sex discrimination.
Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court pushed aside her victory, ruling that she didn’t file her claim in a timely manner. But this was no ordinary argument about filing deadlines.
The court’s conservative majority constructed an argument that so narrowly defines discriminatory acts as to make it near impossible for people like Ledbetter to succeed.
The court said each time Ledbetter’s bosses gave her a discriminatory smaller raise, she was supposed to file a charge with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission within 180 days.
First of all, how would she know? It’s not as if information about raises is posted on the break-room bulletin board. Second, what seems like a small difference at the time can mushroom over years to be a significant disparity.
As dissenting Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said, with such a decision the court doesn’t comprehend or doesn’t care about the insidious way in which women can be victims of pay discrimination.
Ginsburg read a dissent from the bench, a rare move in the court’s world, but one that suggests a strong objection to the majority opinion, held by justices Samuel Alito, Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Chief Justice John Roberts.
In her dissent, Ginsburg was joined by justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter and Stephen Breyer. Together, they pointedly urged Congress to correct the court’s “parsimonious reading” of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
Congressional Democrats, including U.S. Sens. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., and Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., lost no time in announcing they favored legislation that would give workers more time to build their cases.
It is incumbent upon them to devise a careful revision that would allow people like Lilly Ledbetter a reasonable road to redress.
