Lilly Ledbetter, America’s Persistent Widow

On January 28th, President Obama signed his first bill into law, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.

Lilly Ledbetter began working at the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company in 1979 and discovered 19 years later that her male colleagues were being paid significantly more than her (from $559 to $1509 more per month). In 1998, she filed charges with the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission, appealing to the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The district court ruled against her in the case of the Equal Pay Act because the act allows for pay differences based on merit, and pay increases had been determined by Goodyear based on merit evaluations. (I can’t help but wonder what her male colleagues were doing to merit salaries 15 – 40% higher than Ledbetter’s salary, leaving her with $6000 to $18,000 less per year than her coworkers.)

However, the court allowed the other charges to move forward. A jury soon found in her favor on Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and awarded back pay and damages. Yet this victory was short-lived.

Goodyear Company appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, arguing that Ledbetter had not filed within 180 days of the act of discrimination. The court agreed. Ledbetter appealed to the Supreme Court, but again was denied justice.

The court skirted the issue, ignoring the question of whether she had been discriminated against. Instead, they dismissed her case on the basis of the statute of limitations. For the law to apply, they ruled, she would have had to file a suit within 180 days of the first discriminatory paycheck.

Let us be clear about the implications of the Lilly Ledbetter v. Goodyear ruling. The court ruled that if a woman got a new job and found out a year later that her male coworkers were making twice as much as her for doing the same work, she could not sue for back wages. So as long as the employer can keep the wages of their other employees secret for more than 180 days, they will face no consequences for their discriminatory actions.

Lilly Ledbetter’s story is the story of women in America.

After being unknowingly discriminated against for far too long, she at last was shown the injustice of her situation. She demanded justice, fought tirelessly for it, had a few moments where she glimpsed hope, only to have that hope shattered by statutory limits and ludicrous arguments about how women’s perpetually lower wages are somehow based on "merit."

In 2007, several Democratic Congressional representatives proposed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which would redefine the statute of limitations as 180 days from the receipt of the last discriminatory paycheck, rather than 180 days from the first discriminatory paycheck. The act passed the House in 2007, but was opposed by the White House and filibustered in the Senate.

What a relief when Obama raised the issue of fair pay on the campaign trail. What an affirmation of women’s struggles to see that the first bill Obama signed as President was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. We finally have a President who gets it.

Sadly, however, this outcome was anything but inevitable. Only 3 of the 172 House Republicans, none of them women, voted for the act, and the only Republicans in the Senate who voted for the Act were the four female Republican Senators and Arlen Specter. An equal pay bill has been debated in Congress since 1945, and we THOUGHT we had solved the problem with the passage of the Equal Pay Act in 1963.

What’s a young woman about to enter the workforce to make of all this? Do I dare believe that I might finally earn a fair wage instead of the current rate of 77 cents for every dollar a man would earn for comparable work? I find myself drawn to Luke 18:1-8.

"In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared about men. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.’ For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care about men, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually wear me out with her coming!’ And the Lord said, "Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?"
The message?

America needs persistent women. Women with faith that although justice is not here yet, we stand on the promise of a just God. And we will not stop demanding what God (and the Constitution) has promised us.