The American Spectator

AmSpecBlog

No Limitations

By W. James Antle, III on 1.30.09 @ 10:35AM

President Obama has signed his first bill into law, the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. The headlines suggest Obama was simply siding with equal pay for women. What it actually does is open businesses up to litigation and make it more difficult for them to defend themselves against discrimination claims.

When Lily Ledbetter, the woman for whom the new law is named, sued Goodyear for years of pay discrimination, she wasn't alleging that current management was discriminating against her. She filed her lawsuit after she retired, after the supervisor who allegedly discriminated against her had died, and alleged that her paychecks today would be higher if her now-dead supervisor hadn't discriminated against her back in the day. A jury found in her favor, but a court of appeals and the Supreme Court held that the statute of limitations in the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 case had expired.

Obama and company have portrayed the decision as a rigid application of a 180-day ldeadine for bringing discriminate claims even when the discrimination has not yet been discovered. Not true. Ledbetter waited for years after she first suspected discrimination to sue; she could have sued under the Equal Pay Act, which had longer deadlines. And there are actually a number of exceptions to the deadline, such as "equitable tolling."

This bill was a priority of organized labor. For more details, read Paul Mirengoff's post on the Lily Ledbetter lie.