The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 (LLFPA) is an Act of Congress about pay discrimination that was signed into law by President Barack Obama on January 29, 2009.
The bill amends the Civil Rights Act of 1964 stating that the 180-day statute of limitations for filing an equal-pay lawsuit regarding pay discrimination resets with each new discriminatory paycheck. The law was a direct answer to the Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., , a U.S. Supreme Court decision holding that the statute of limitations for presenting an equal-pay lawsuit begins on the date that the employer makes the initial discriminatory wage decision, not at the date of the most recent paycheck, as a lower court had ruled.
A first bill to amend the statutory limitations period and supersede the Ledbetter decision was introduced in the 110th United States Congress but was never enacted, as after having been passed by the House it failed to survive a cloture vote in the Senate due to the opposition of most of the Republican Senators.
During the campaign for the 2008 elections, the Democrats criticized Republicans for defeating the 2007 version of the bill, citing Republican presidential candidate John McCain's opposition. Then-candidate Barack Obama supported the bill.
After the 2008 election gave the Democratic Party control of both the House and Senate, a new version of the bill was introduced in the first session of the 111th United States Congress and quickly passed both bodies. It became the law signed by the new President Obama after he took office on January 20.
Court rulings
Lilly Ledbetter, a production supervisor at a Goodyear tire plant in Alabama, filed an equal-pay lawsuit seeking back pay for pay discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. She worked for that company for many years without learning that she was paid much less than the men holding the same job. She filed the lawsuit six months before her early retirement in 1998. The District court said her lawsuit was filed on time, but the Court of Appeals said her lawsuit was too late. Ledbetter appealed the decision to the United States Supreme Court. The Supreme Court ruled in 2007 by a 5-4 majority vote that Ledbetter's complaint was filed too late because the discriminatory decisions relating to pay had been made more than 180 days prior to the date she filed her charge, as explained by Justice Samuel Alito. The minority position explained by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg proposed an interpretation according to which the law runs from the date of any paycheck that contains an amount affected by a prior discriminatory pay decision.
The Ledbetter decision was cited by federal judges in 300 cases before the LLFPA was passed. These cases involved not only Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, but also the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, Fair Housing Act, Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act and Eighth Amendment to the Constitution.
The case had never received much attention before going to the Supreme Court, but the Court's ruling ignited legal groups on the left and Democrats that took action to transform the Ledbetter case into a rallying issue for the left. Some activists saw Lilly Ledbetter as an ideal standard-bearer in their attempt to persuade the public that the Supreme Court was moving too far to the right.
Among the first to criticize the Court's decision was Marcia Greenberger, president of the National Women's Law Center, that saw in the ruling a "setback for women and a setback for civil rights" and called Ginsburg's opinion a "clarion call to the American people that this slim majority of the court is headed in the wrong direction." Debra Ness, president of the National Partnership for Women & Families, also condemned the decision, saying, “If employers can keep the discrimination hidden for a period of time, they can continue to discriminate without being held accountable.” On the other side, the majority's findings were applauded by the US Chamber of Commerce, that called it a "fair decision" that "eliminates a potential wind-fall against employers by employees trying to dredge up stale pay claims."