3-26-08, 9:48 am

After working for Goodyear Tire & Rubber, Co. for 19 years, Lily Ledbetter found the company had been cheating her. An anonymous note slipped into her mailbox showed that male employees at the same level with similar experience earned substantially more than she.

Ledbetter sued the company, and a jury awarded her $3 million in compensatory and punitive damages. Goodyear appealed the decision to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, where a conservative majority of activist judges appointed by Republican presidents voted in favor of the corporation. After an appeal, the right-wing majority on the Supreme Court, by a 5-4 vote, upheld the 11th Court's decision to rescind the jury award in favor of Ledbetter.

The conservative majorities at the 11th Circuit and on the Supreme Court based their unfair decision on a technicality and offered Ledbetter and others who face pay discrimination a Catch-22 solution. The court ruled that according to the law under which Ledbetter filed her suit, she and others victimized by discrimination must file suit within 6 months of receiving the first discriminatory check.

Of course, Ledbetter only learned about Goodyear's gender-based two-tier pay system after 19 years. The court refused to take into account that Ledbetter could not have sued over something she knew nothing about.

Last summer, AFL-CIO head John Sweeney accused the right-wing majority on the Court of favoring the corporation on an unfair technicality. 'In response to her fight for justice, the majority on the Supreme Court bent over backwards – ignoring both precedent and simple common sense – to rob her of her right to equal treatment in the workplace,' he said in a press statement.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, in her dissent from the Republican-appointed majority's ruling, described the workplace atmosphere at Goodyear as fostering discriminatory acts and attitudes. She noted pervasive gender bias at Ledbetter's workplace, citing remarks by Ledbetter's supervisors given as evidence at the original trial of their animosity towards Ledbetter and women workers in general.

According to the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, 'The [conservative majority's] decision fails to protect most victims of pay discrimination because it ignores workplace reality. Very few employees have ready access to their colleagues’ salaries, or to any other information which would clue them in to the fact that they are being paid less than their peers.'

The Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber decision defended the interest of large corporations who adopt discriminatory practices by imposing impossibly high hurdles for victims of such actions. It essentially says, that if a company can keep careful secrets about discriminatory practices, it should be able to avoid punishment. The decision further will adversely affect not only women but also male and female employees who are discriminated against by race, religion, disability, and age.

The Fair Pay Restoration Act, introduced in Congress last year, would amend the law to read that a person has 6 months to file a lawsuit for pay discrimination after the last discriminatory paycheck that person received. The law maintains a statute of limitations, but provides workers a reasonable means of seeking compensation for unfair practices.

Jocelyn Samuels of the National Women's Law Center said the bill would 'reverse the Supreme Court’s decision in Ledbetter and help to ensure that individuals subject to unlawful pay discrimination are able to vindicate their rights under federal anti-discrimination laws.'

Additionally, by making a reasonable framework for seeking compensation, the law would give corporations who engage in unfair practices a motive for changing the way they treat employees and ensure fairness in the workplace.

The bill is pending in the US Senate, having passed the House earlier this year. Both Democratic presidential candidates support its passage.

In a press statement last January, Deborah Frett, who heads the Business and Professional Women/USA applauded the passage of the bill in the House, but added, 'now the Senate must act to ensure that individuals subjected to unlawful compensation discrimination can continue to effectively assert their rights under the federal anti-discrimination laws.”

Republican presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain (AZ) opposes the bill and has pledged to appoint conservative activist judges to the federal judiciary who will make similar rulings.

--Reach Joel Wendland at