Supreme Court Chooses to Uphold Discrimination (by Byron Williams at HuffPost)

Byron Williams
Supreme Court Chooses to Uphold Discrimination

For those who felt they wasted their money on the Don't Blame Me I Voted for John Kerry bumper stickers, this past week's Supreme Court ruling may bring a change of heart.

In a 5-4 decision, the majority of which included the two men that President Bush appointed in his second-term, the court sided with the rights of employers while potentially turning its back on millions of workers.

By ruling against Lilly Ledbetter, the lone female supervisor at the Goodyear Tire and Rubber plant in Gadsden, Ala., because she did not file her lawsuit in a timely manner, the court affirmed that workers might not sue their employers over unequal pay caused by discrimination alleged to have occurred years earlier.

Moreover, and here's the kicker, they used Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to justify it.
Ledbetter was a production supervisor at the Goodyear plant for nearly 20 years. In 1998, she filed a discrimination suit that her pay was lower than it should have been for the years she worked, claiming it was because of her sex.

A jury agreed with Ledbetter, that Goodyear discriminated on the basis of gender, and she won damages -- back pay of about $200,000, and punitive damages of over $3 million. An appellate court, however, sided with Goodyear because Ledbetter had not filed her claim within 180 days that Title VII law requires. Title VII is the federal statute that bars discrimination in the workplace on the basis of race, color, sex, national origin and religion.

The Supreme Court upheld the appellate court that the discriminatory practice is the decision to discriminate, and one must file by the required deadline of the decision. Courts said the decision is what counts, not the effects from it that's felt every year thereafter. In short, Ledbetter should have filed her claim 19 years ago. .....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/byron-williams/supreme-court-chooses-to-_b_50476.html

this bullshit...

How can you track if there is a precedent if there is not enough time to evaluate the situation...180 days is not long enough time to prove anything...

There's a movement afoot to do precisely that.

I was against this, going with the folks that pointed out that until now each paycheck was another 'instance' of discrimination. In other words, you have until 180 days after your last paycheck showing evidence of discrimination.

Then some others pointed out how the argument that won the day went. The law makes no distinction between hiring and salary decisions: You get fired, and you have 180 days to file suit. However, even on day 200 after you're not hired, the decision is still pertinent: It's another day in which the decision not to hire you results in your being unemployed.

In the case of hiring, it's the decision that matters, not the continuing results. In the case of salary, it was continuing results that mattered, not the decision. But if the law's the same for both hiring and salary this can't be right.

The law's badly written. However, I agree with the supporters of the decision: Leaving the decision to file suit temporally unbounded is silly; the cut-off period should be longer for wage discrimination, but not unbounded.