Another shot at pay equity

LILLY LEDBETTER, today an Alabama grandmother, was given star billing when she spoke to the Democratic National Convention last August. The retired Goodyear tire plant supervisor has become a symbol of the inequities that persist in the workplace decades after the 1964 Civil Rights Act was passed to correct them.

Ledbetter was the only female supervisor working at the Goodyear plant in Gadsden, Ala. Without her knowledge, she suffered a typical kind of pay discrimination: small raises and adjustments that gave more money to the men accrued with every paycheck. It was 19 years before Ledbetter realized she was being paid $18,100 less than a male counterpart for doing the same job. Today the lower pay affects her pension.

Ledbetter sued under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, and a jury agreed with her. But Goodyear appealed all the way to the US Supreme Court, and in 2007 the court ruled 5-4 against her on a key technicality: that she had not filed her claim within the 180 days specified in the law. The case is remembered for the stinging dissent from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the only woman on the court, in a rare reading from the bench. "In our view," she said, "the court does not comprehend, or is indifferent to, the insidious way in which women can be victims of pay discrimination."

Ginsburg invited Congress to clear up the murky language in Title VII, to say that a discrimination claim need only be filed within 180 days of the harm becoming known, not 180 days after its first occurrence. Such a change is only common sense. Few supervisors, or even colleagues, will volunteer the news that someone is being cheated based on their sex or race. It can take years before the harm is discovered.

A few months after the court ruling, Congress did pass clarifying language - or at least the House did. The US Senate has failed to pass its own bill, at least partly because President Bush has always threatened to veto it.

But President-elect Barack Obama supports what has been dubbed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. In a statement at the convention, Obama said: "The fact that women are paid less than their male coworkers for doing the same job is unacceptable in the 21st century and counter to both the progress we've made and our shared values as Americans."

So the Senate need not fear alienating business interests only to have their efforts vetoed by a hostile president. When a new Congress takes up the Fair Pay Act again, perhaps as early as tomorrow, we hope it answers with a ringing endorsement of equal pay for equal work - at last.

It is too late for Lilly Ledbetter to get the pay she deserved. But if Congress fixes the glitch in Title VII, millions of hardworking women will thank her for making a federal case out of it.