- Person
- Ruth Bader Ginsburg
- Lived
- 1933–2020
- Field
- Constitutional Law
- From
- American
The story
Lilly Ledbetter began working at the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company's plant in Gadsden, Alabama, in 1979. She started on the same pay as the men, but by the time she retired she was earning $3,727 a month, while the fifteen men doing comparable work earned between $4,286 and $5,236. She believed that negative evaluations early in her career, which held back her raises for years, had been discriminatory. In 1998 she filed a charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and then sued under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. A jury found in her favour.
Goodyear appealed, and on 29 May 2007 the Supreme Court ruled against her by 5 votes to 4. Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito held that she had to file her claim within 180 days of the original pay decision. Later paychecks shaped by that decision did not, in the Court's view, start the clock again, even if she had not known about the discrimination at the time.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote a forceful dissent, joined by three colleagues. She pointed out that pay gaps are often hidden and build up gradually, and that women in male-dominated workplaces may be reluctant to make waves over small sums until the difference grows. She argued that each paycheck affected by a discriminatory decision should count, and she called on Congress to amend Title VII to undo the ruling. The president of the National Women's Law Center called her opinion a clarion call to the American people.
Congress took up that call. House leaders announced a bill within weeks, and although an early version passed the House but failed in the Senate in 2007, the issue featured in the 2008 election campaign. Introduced again by Senator Barbara Mikulski, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act became the first bill signed into law by President Barack Obama, on 29 January 2009. It provides that the 180-day time limit resets with each new paycheck affected by a discriminatory decision.
Ginsburg was credited with helping to inspire the law. Before it passed, federal judges had cited the Ledbetter decision in some 300 cases, involving not only pay but age discrimination, housing and education. The act restored the ability of workers to challenge pay discrimination that they could not have known about when it began.
Why it matters
The Fair Pay Act restored the ability of workers to challenge pay discrimination they could not have known about.
About Ruth Bader Ginsburg
U.S. Supreme Court Justice; pioneer of gender equality jurisprudence; co-founded the ACLU Women's Rights Project.
More about Ruth Bader Ginsburg
- Ginsburg co-founded the ACLU Women's Rights ProjectIn 1972 Ruth Bader Ginsburg co-founded the Women's Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, which joined more than 300 sex discrimination cases by 1974.
- Ginsburg co-founded the first US women's rights law journalIn 1970 Ruth Bader Ginsburg co-founded the Women's Rights Law Reporter at Rutgers, the first law journal in the United States to focus exclusively on women's rights.
- Ginsburg was Columbia Law School's first tenured womanIn 1972 Ruth Bader Ginsburg became the first woman granted tenure at Columbia Law School, where she co-wrote the first law school casebook on sex discrimination.
- Ruth Bader Ginsburg won five of six cases for equalityLong before joining the Supreme Court, Ruth Bader Ginsburg argued six sex discrimination cases before it in the 1970s and won five.
- Ginsburg's Olmstead ruling advanced disability rightsIn Olmstead v. L.C. (1999), Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote that the ADA covers mental illness and that needlessly confining people with disabilities in institutions is discrimination.
- Ginsburg's Reed v. Reed brief won equal protection for womenRuth Bader Ginsburg wrote the brief in Reed v. Reed (1971), the first case in which the Supreme Court extended the Constitution's equal protection guarantee to women.
- Ginsburg won equal pay for women teachers at RutgersAt Rutgers Law School, Ruth Bader Ginsburg discovered she was paid less than male colleagues. She joined an equal pay campaign that won substantial raises for the women.
- Ginsburg's VMI opinion opened a military college to womenIn United States v. Virginia (1996), Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote the opinion striking down the Virginia Military Institute's male-only admissions policy.
Sources
- Ruth Bader Ginsburg Wikipedia
- Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 Wikipedia
- Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. Wikipedia
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