Employment Law Information

The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was one of the first pieces of legislation signed by President Barack Obama, being signed into law on January 29, 2009. Its purpose is to combat wage discrepancies between male and female employees, and it amends the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Age and Discrimination Act of 1967.

The Act is a response to the Supreme Court’s ruling in the case Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., which held that an employee had 180 days from the date a salary was agreed upon to file a lawsuit attesting pay discrimination. That meant that a female employee had only six months to establish that she was being paid less than her male counterparts doing the same job and then to file a lawsuit against the company.

The problem with this system is that a female employee would have to somehow figure out in her first six months at the job what everyone else was making and then file a lawsuit before the statute of limitations expired. So imagine that a woman has been working at a job for a few years, making less money than men doing the same work but not knowing it. When she found out that she had been making less than those men across several years, she would be unable to do anything about it because the statute of limitations is six months from when she agreed to a salary.

The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was first proposed in 2007, shortly after the original court ruling, but was defeated by the more Republican 110th United States Congress. Democrats were quick to criticize their Republican counterparts, asserting that they were essentially supporting wage discrimination by making it difficult to redress wage discrepancies. As a result, when the more heavily Democrat 111th session began, the retooled and restructured Lilly Ledbetter act was one of the first pieces of legislation passed. The Act established that the 180-day statute of limitations actually resets each time a discriminatory paycheck is issued. So as long as you are being paid an unfair wage, you are able to file litigation against your employer. The Act makes it much easier for employees to demand compensation for unfair and illegal wage discrimination.

For more information about the legal aspects of wage discrimination, go to http://www.austinemploymentattorney.com

Joseph Devine

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