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An Unfair Play Against Fair Pay

Lilly Ledbetter worked in a Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. plant in Gadsden, Ala., for 19 years before she received some valuable information from an anonymous tipster: She learned that she was making $6,500 less than the lowest-paid guy who had her job.

She did what anybody might do. She sued. She was in for a surprise. So were a lot of civil rights experts. If any cases were intended to be covered by Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, they thought, it was cases like hers.

Indeed, even the women I know who are Hesitant Feminists, the middle-of-the-road womenfolk who insist that "I'm not a feminist, but .," usually tend to follow that "but" with, ". I believe that women should receive equal pay for equal work."

But after Ledbetter's case made it all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court last year, the high court ruled 5-4 that the law did not apply to her. She was too late. She should have filed her complaint years earlier when the original discrimination occurred.

Indeed? As a legal matter, the decision was defensible, but as a practical matter it was inexcusable.

The law said she had to file her discrimination complain with 180 days of the alleged unlawful discrimination. The surprise came with the Supreme Court's interpretation of when the clock is supposed to start on that 180 days.

Since the 1960s, nine federal circuit courts and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission had ruled that the 180-day clock started - or restarted - every time the employee received an unequal paycheck.

After all, it was reasoned, every unequal check is an illegal act of discrimination.

But imagine Ledbetter's surprise when the high court ruled in her case that, no, the 180-day statute of limitation began with her very first discriminatory paycheck almost 20 years earlier.

In other words, if employers manage to discriminate against workers for at least 180 days, they're home free, exempt from discrimination lawsuits.

In her dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg called on Congress to step in with new legislation to clarify the intent of the original civil rights act. A bill to restore the law's original intent, named after Ledbetter, passed in the House last year and was introduced in the Senate, where it failed last week to win enough support to survive a threatened veto by President Bush.

Much as Bush and Senate conservatives say they oppose discrimination against women and minorities in the workplace, they appear to fear too many lawsuits even more.

And, like almost every other issue of consequence these days, the Lilly Ledbetter bill looms as a defining issue in the presidential race.

As luck would have it, Arizona Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, missed the vote on the bill because he was on a trip through the South.

News reports described him as visiting places that Republican candidates don't usually visit, usually because they don't have to. He visited locations identified with the wars on poverty and discrimination - like Selma, Ala., scene of a historic clash between local police and civil rights volunteers seeking equal voting rights in 1965.

So it's ironic that he missed the vote on one of the most important civil rights bills of our time. But that's OK, equal pay fans. If he had been there, he says, he would have voted against it.

McCain told reporters that he opposed the measure because he agreed with Bush that it would prompt a flood of lawsuits. Actually, it wouldn't - because it hasn't.

We know from experience with the original law that there was no flood of lawsuits before the high court overturned it and there would be no reason to have a deluge now.

Besides, in an unsuccessful attempt to satisfy conservatives, new caps were put onto the total damages that can be awarded. The proposed law now would limit claims filed to a two-year maximum.

That means, even if the bill is revived this year and wins enough votes to override Bush's threatened veto, the most redress that someone like Ledbetter could hope for after 19 years of discrimination would be for only the final two years.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat, would like to revive it this year, although that's a long shot. Members of Congress like to avoid controversy in election years even more than they try to avoid controversy in every other year.

But since Sen. McCain is going to face either Illinois Sen. Barack Obama or New York Sen. Hillary Clinton in November, both of whom support the Ledbetter bill, there's time for the issue to receive a national spotlight.

Now that we know how much McCain appreciates civil rights history, it's time to find out what kind of new history he plans to make.

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Related Topics: civil rights | clinton | gender | mccain | obama | senate |

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