Looking to Congress for Justice on Wage Bias and Gender Discrimination

[babylonsister]

http://www.alternet.org/rights/52897/

Looking to Congress for Justice on Wage Bias and Gender Discrimination

By Peggy Simpson, Women's Media Center. Posted June 2, 2007.

The Supreme Court's latest ruling is a dangerous setback to civil rights. With any hope, Congress will correct it.



Key congressional Democrats plan to take up the challenge by Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to overturn what she called the court's "parsimonious reading" of civil rights laws banning wage discrimination.

In a 5-4 opinion written by the newest justice, Samuel Alito, the Supreme Court said that Lilly Ledbetter, a supervisor at a Goodyear tire factory in Alabama, waited too long to claim wage discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. She would have had to file suit within 180 days of Goodyear's first discriminatory paycheck.

Ledbetter began work at Goodyear's Gadsen's plant in 1979, the only female among 16 area supervisors, with pay similar to those of her male peers. Years later, she found out it had slipped dramatically. Her pay was as much as 40 percent below that of the men when she left in 1998. She made $48,000 a year, $6,500 less than the lowest paid male supervisor.

She filed a discrimination lawsuit, got support from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and won a $3.8 million award from a jury. A judge reduced that to $360,000. And the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals threw out the case, saying Ledbetter had missed the 180-day deadlines for filing suit after discrimination occurs.

In ruling against Ledbetter, the Supreme Court threw out decades of established legal principles -- and appeared to ignore a 1991 law of Congress as well. If left to stand, the Alito opinion could cast doubt on thousands of pending wage discrimination lawsuits.

In an unusual move, Ginsburg read aloud the minority opinion. "In our view, the court does not comprehend, or is indifferent to, the insidious way in which women can be victims of pay discrimination." She noted that "pay disparities often occur, as they did in Ledbetter's case, in small increments; only over time is there strong cause to suspect that discrimination is at work."

Ending her dissent, she said, "once again, the ball is in Congress' court."

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[MADem]

1. What did they call that ruling? The "Barefoot and Pregnant Broads" Decision?

That's just astounding. Disgraceful. Egregious.

If you don't stick your nose in everyone else's pay packet, and have no KNOWLEDGE that you're getting fucked relative to your co-workers, you have no redress? Gee, maybe they should call it the Psychic Paycheck ruling...no psychic powers, no decision in your favor!

The ball may be in Congress's court, but I'd say those baaastids on the bench have a lot of 'em to pull that kind of stunt. And not in a good way, either. How the hell do they go home and look their wives and daughters in the eye? Or do they REALLY not give a shit?

I guess they don't.

Shit, they oughta impeach Alito, and the rest of his cronies, for rank incompetence. That'd give his dipshit wife somethin' ta cry about!!!!

What a piss poor ruling.