http://www.findingdulcinea.com/news/politics/2009/jan/Congress-Passes-Fair-Pay-Act-After-Months-of-Opposition.htmlPresident Barack Obama is expected to sign the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay bill into law on Thursday. The bill, which the House of Representatives passed on Tuesday by a vote of 250-177, will “give workers alleging unequal pay the right to sue within 180 days of their most recent paycheck,” according to CNN. The Bush White House and the Republicans in the Senate prevented the bill from passing last year, and it became a campaign issue during the presidential election.
The law will reverse a U.S. Supreme Court decision from 2007, which said that women could not sue for wage discrimination unless they filed the claim within 180 days of receiving their first discriminatory paycheck. In the Supreme Court case, Lilly Ledbetter argued that she did not know about the wage discrimination until the latter part of her 19-year career as a Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. worker. Almost “two decades of discrimination meant her salary was 15 percent to 40 percent lower than what her male counterparts earned,” Bloomberg writes.
The new bill, which modifies the Civil Rights Act of 1964, says that each discriminatory paycheck renews the 180-day statute of limitations period. In addition to gender, the law will apply to wage discrimination based on race, religion, disability and country of origin.
“Wage discrimination still exists because there are loopholes in our federal laws,” said the bill’s sponsor, Maryland Democrat Barbara Mikulski, according to Bloomberg. “We want to close the loopholes.”
The bill’s supporters have claimed that most workers don’t compare their paychecks with each other and thus don’t discover any inequality until much later on. But opponents argue that trial lawyers will seize upon the more relaxed legislation and barrage the courts with lawsuits; furthermore, employees could potentially hold off filing their claims until later to obtain more money, opponents say, according to the Associated Press. They also say that the bill will hurt business by increasing costs.
An alternative Republican proposal was turned down. It “would have required employees alleging discrimination to act within 180 days after they would have reasonably been expected to know they were being discriminated against,” Bloomberg writes.
The House initially passed the bill on Jan. 9 but had combined the bill with another one, which made it easier to obtain discrimination awards. The Senate detached that more controversial measure when approving the bill 61-36 on Jan. 22, forcing the House to vote again.
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