Just over a year ago, President Barack Obama signed his first major piece of legislation. The Lilly
Ledbetter Fair Pay Act overturned a controversial 2007 Supreme Court case, and made it easier for women who faced wage discrimination to sue their employers.
Here is what I said about Lilly Ledbetter at the time.
Basically, the Ledbetter Act revised the statute of limitations (SOL) for filing discrimination claims with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), so that each discriminatory paycheck essentially restarted the SOL clock for plaintiffs.
According to a recent article over at Law 360, here’s what that means for working women:
“People challenging a wide variety of practices that resulted in discriminatory compensation are benefiting from the act’s passage,” EEOC said. “These practices include determining base pay or wages, deciding job classifications, denying career ladder or other noncompetitive promotions, denying tenure, and failing to respond to requests for raises.”
All told, during the past year, EEOC received more than 68,000 complaints of workplace discrimination, including 4,800 charges of wage discrimination, 1,900 of which were filed by women alleging sex discrimination in compensation. Some of those women, depending on when they filed, may not have gotten their day in court if not for the Lilly Ledbetter Act.
The bottom line is this: The Ledbetter Act is the latest part of a federal regime that prohibits employers from discriminating against employees based on gender. We can expect to see more and more claims filed under its provisions.
If you or someone you know has been the victim of workplace discrimination, you should
know your legal rights.
Unpaid Overtime and Wages