Blocked — 04/30/08

Sat, May 17 2008

— Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and his fellow Republicans are being deservedly criticized for blocking passage of the Lilly Ledbetter Act of 2007. It is a clear example of choosing the rights of employers over the rights of their workers.
There is little question that Ledbetter was a victim of gender discrimination as an employee of the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. plant in Gadsden, Ala. However, she had worked there for 19 years before an anonymous tipster informed her that she was earning $6,500 less than the lowest paid male employee who had the exact same job.
Ledbetter sued, and both a trial jury and the federal Equal Opportunity Employment Commission ruled in her favor. That’s not surprising. After all, the fact clearly pointed to gender discrimination. Ledbetter was earning considerably less than even her male counterparts with less seniority.
However, a controversial 5-4 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court overturned EOEC and the trial court decisions, but the decision was based more on a technicality than on the merits of the case. The majority ruled that Ledbetter had waited too long to file her complaint — that Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act required that a discrimination complaint be filed within 180 days of the act that led to the complaint. Never mind that it took more than 180 days for Ledbetter to learn that she was a victim of discrimination.
In disagreeing with the majority in that ruling, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg called on Congress to enact new legislation to clarify the 1964 law and give victims more time to file discrimination complaints. That’s exactly what the Lilly Ledbetter Act of 2007 — which already had been approved by the U.S. House of Representatives — intended to do. But McConnell last week successfully led the effort to block approval of the bill by the U.S. Senate.
By supporting a literal interpretation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, we commended the Supreme Court’s majority in the Ledbetter case for resisting the urge to legislate from the bench by interpreting the law instead of rewriting it. However, at the same time, we called upon Congress to enact a new law giving victims of discrimination more time to file complaints.
We thought doing so would not even be controversial, but we were wrong. In voting against the Ledbetter act, McConnell and other opponents said they feared the change would lead to a rash of lawsuits against employers. However, the only way such lawsuits would be successful is if those filing the complaints were indeed victims of job discrimination.
McConnell can talk all he wants about being for the little guy, but in this case, he clearly came down on the side of big corporations.