Atlanta Employment Lawyer Blog

As the area of employment law continues to evolve, new laws are enacted, and old ones may be amended or interpreted in new ways. Fortunately many times, the new laws create greater protections for workers against employment discrimination. But what happens if you are subjected to discriminatory actions before a law becomes effective? What if case law changes the way a law is applied? In some limited circumstances, old claims can be “revived” as the result of new laws.

One example of this the Lily Ledbetter Act – as known as the Fair Pay Act. The Fair Pay Act was enacted in 2009 and provides that the statute of limitations “resets” with each new discriminatory paycheck. It also contains a crucial provision – that the act applies retroactively to claims pending as of May 28, 2007.

This provision was critical in allowing a group of white police officers claiming “reverse race discrimination” to maintain a claim under the act for actions that began before the Act was in place. In Groesch v. Springfield, Ill., the officers filed a claim for pay bias in July 2004. The claim was dismissed in 2007 as being untimely. The police officers then appealed. While the appeal was pending, President Obama passed the Ledbetter Act, which provides that each unfair paycheck constitutes a new violation, restarting the clock to file a lawsuit.

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The first bill that President Obama has signed while in office was the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, signed on Thursday, January 29th, and which overturns the 2007 US Supreme Court decision in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire and Rubber.

Ledbetter, who travelled with the President on the inauguration train from Philly to DC, and who also spoke at the Democratic National Convention, had sued Goodyear for unequal pay over her 19 years of employment with the tire and rubber company. She submitted evidence that men had been paid more money than she had been paid for doing the same work for the company. She claimed that she had not been aware of the pay discrepancy until shortly before she left the company, and that was why she had to file the lawsuit after the normal statute of limitations had run.

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You may recall that in 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co., in which it held that victims of pay discrimination have only 180 days from the date of an initial discriminatory pay practice to file a claim of discrimination, even if such a practice continues well after the initial act of discrimination. In Ms. Ledbetter’s case, although she was paid at a lower rate than her male employees for 20 years, she did not learn about the pay discrimination until long after it first occurred. Since her discovery of the pay disparity came about more than 180 days after the initial discriminatory pay decision, the Court held that her claims were barred by the 180-day statute of limitations contained in Title VII. The Court was silent on the Equal Pay Act, which provides women a separate avenue for claims of disparate pay going back as far as three years prior to the filing of suit.

Continue reading "Pay Discrimination Bill Fails in Congress" »