Leadership Conference on Civil Rights

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Civil Rights Bill Will Fix Recent Supreme Court Ruling on Workplace Discrimination

On July 31, the House of Representatives passed legislation (225-199) to restore the ability of American workers to sue for pay discrimination. A companion bill, the bipartisan Fair Pay Restoration Act (S. 1843) has been introduced in the Senate by Senators Kennedy (D-MA), Snowe (R-ME), Specter (R-PA), and others, and may be voted on soon.

The Fair Pay Restoration Act is an important legislative “fix” to a May U.S. Supreme Court decision (Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber), which severely limited the ability of victims of pay discrimination to sue under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In Ledbetter, the Court ruled (5-4) that Lilly Ledbetter could receive no recourse from her employer, even though for years she was discriminatorily paid less than her male colleagues. The Court said that Ledbetter had filed her discrimination complaint too late, and calculated the law’s 180-day deadline to sue from the day Ledbetter received her last discriminatory raise, rather than – as the law had previously made clear – from the day she received her last discriminatory paycheck.

The Ledbetter decision is fundamentally unfair to victims of pay discrimination - and it ignores the realities of the workplace. Employees generally don’t know enough about what their co-workers earn, or how pay decisions are made, to file a complaint shortly after a discriminatory pay decision is made. However, without that knowledge, the Supreme Court has declared that victims of ongoing pay discrimination have no claim – regardless of how egregious the discrimination is.

The Supreme Court’s misinterpretation of Title VII has ignited a firestorm of criticism from civil rights groups and newspapers across the country for being inconsistent with Congress’ intent and the Court’s own precedent. Now, as Justice Ginsburg pointed out in her strongly worded Ledbetter dissent, “the ball is in Congress’ court” to provide a legislative fix to this harmful decision.