Kennedy battles limits on pay discrimination lawsuits

Bill widening window for claims faces GOP fight

WASHINGTON - Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, seeking to reverse a controversial Supreme Court ruling on pay discrimination, said yesterday that he will introduce a bill that would ease restrictions on workers who want to sue their employers.

But President Bush has threatened to veto it, and Senate Republicans plan to block the bill with a filibuster unless Kennedy can assemble 60 votes to get it through a sharply-divided Senate. The bill would allow workers to file pay-discrimination claims within 180 days of receiving a paycheck affected by a discriminatory pay decision, rather than within 180 days of the actual decision to pay them less.

As the law stands, "if an employer can hide its illegal pay decision for 180 days, it is then free - year after year - to discriminate by paying women less than men, people of color less than whites, older workers less than younger ones, adherents of one religion less than others, and people with disabilities less than their co-workers, and these employees can never get relief," Kennedy said in a statement yesterday.

The Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which passed in the House of Representatives in July 2007, seeks to restore the clear intent of Congress that workers must have a reasonable opportunity to file a pay discrimination claim after they become victims of discriminatory compensation. The Senate will be taking up the bill for a vote this week.

The pending bill "closes this loophole by making clear that as long as the discrimination continues, a worker's right to challenge it continues as well," Kennedy said. "There's nothing radical about this, it simply restores the law that employers and workers had lived with for decades, until May 29, 2007, when the Ledbetter case was decided."

On that day, the Supreme Court overturned the case of Lilly Ledbetter, an Alabama tire plant employee who sued when, after 20 years, she found that male co-workers who had similar jobs were paid more than she was. The justices ruled that Ledbetter had not met the 180-day deadline to sue the company.

The White House, through the Office of Management and Budget, said in a statement that the Bush administration supports laws against bias, but that the bill would encourage frivolous lawsuits against employers. The OMB is a Cabinet-level office that often handles White House policy issues. The bill "does not appear to be based on evidence" that the current law has "caused any systemic prejudice to the interests of employees," according to the statement.

Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Senate minority leader, said at a press conference yesterday that he intends to block the Fair Pay Act on the Senate floor.

McConnell said he believes the bill "creates massive new opportunities to sue" and will flood the court system with baseless lawsuits. "We think that this bill is primarily designed to create a massive amount of new litigation in our country, and I think that is the reason for the resistance to its passage on our side."

In a conference call from Kennedy's office late last week, Ledbetter and Marcia Greenberger, the co president of the National Women's Law Center, said they were optimistic the bill would attract enough votes to stave off a GOP filibuster and override a Bush veto. Greenberger said several Republican senators, including Olympia Snowe of Maine and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, have pledged their votes.

Ledbetter said she was disappointed that the Supreme Court voided her case and that passage of the bill that bears her name is far from guaranteed. She said she will not personally benefit if the bill is passed - her case is over and she's retired, living on a pension that would have been far higher if she had been paid the same as her male coworkers.

Still, "If I can get this bill passed, it will all be worthwhile," she said.

Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.