Sunday, April 27, 2008
Editorial: Protecting discrimination
A wrongheaded Supreme Court ruling makes it all but impossible to file wage discrimination claims on time. Congress should overturn the decision.
From the RoundTable blog
Read the latest entries
Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, nonsensically, that only the original decision to pay someone a lower salary because of their race or gender constituted a discriminatory act.
Prior to that ruling, each paycheck reduced by discrimination constituted a cause of action.
Because of this ruling, workers who have been discriminated against had only six months from the initial salary decision to file suit against their employer.
In effect, this decision gutted rules against pay discrimination.
As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in a stinging dissent, "Pay disparities often occur, as they did in [the plaintiff's] case, in small increments; cause to suspect that discrimination is at work develops only over time."
Workers can't sue for discrimination they don't realize has occurred.
That didn't bother the Supreme Court majority, but it should bother members of Congress.
The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill to overturn the ruling, which rested on a strict -- and incorrect -- reading of statute, not constitutional principle.
But Senate Republicans blocked the bill with a filibuster.
Republicans opposed to the bill said it would encourage frivolous lawsuits, but there is nothing frivolous about wage discrimination.
As Lilly Ledbetter, the woman at the heart of last year's decision, said prior to the Senate's Wednesday vote, the lower pay she illegally received is reflected now in her pension and Social Security.
"They treated me like a second-class citizen not only when I worked, but for the rest of my life," she said.
Remember, this ruling did not hinge whatsoever on whether a discrimination claim was frivolous. The question was how long an employee had to file a legitimate complaint.
The Supreme Court said the law demands that employees file claims well before most would have a clue, much less convincing evidence, that they have been discriminated against.
If the law does demand that, then the law must be changed.
"This debate today is not about allowing, favoring or supporting discrimination," claimed Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Georgia.
But allowing this unjust ruling to stand does allow and encourage discrimination. The Republicans who blocked legislation to overturn it should not believe otherwise.
