Background Information on the Fair Pay Restoration Act

September 18, 2007

The Fair Pay Restoration Act (S. 1843) was introduced to address the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision (Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber), which severely limited the ability of victims of pay discrimination to sue under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In Ledbetter, the Court ruled (5-4) that Lilly Ledbetter could receive no back pay or damages from her employer even though a jury found that she was unfairly paid less than her male colleagues for many years . The Court said that Ledbetter had filed her discrimination complaint too late, calculating the beginning of the 180-day deadline way back when Goodyear first started paying Ledbetter less than the male supervisors, even though she continued to receive discriminatory paychecks for years and years afterward.

Since inquiring about the salaries and raises of other employees is often strongly discouraged by employers, the Court's ruling that workers must uncover pay discrimination within 180 days of the first discrepancy creates a virtual impossibility. For all intents and purposes, the ruling sanctioned months if not years of lower pay for women and other affected workers. The decision further encourages employers who are paying their employees unfairly to cover up their actions in the first 180 days, and then they will be free to discriminate openly after this 180 day deadline for filing a complaint has passed. TheFair Pay Restoration Act (S. 1843)like its counterpart passed by the House, the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act (H.R. 2831) eliminates these unreasonable time limits, allowing victims of pay discrimination to seek back pay and damages when they become aware of the injustice.

Note: This bill does not remove the cap on damages that was put into Title VII by the 1991 Civil Rights Act. Advocates are working with members of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees to introduce and pass this important companion legislation in the near future. Although Lilly Ledbetter was awarded $3 million in damages by the jury, Title VII's caps only allow her to receive less than $300,000 of that jury award. The Supreme Court, ruling that her case was filed too late, overturned even these limited damages.

ACT NOW - Tell your senators to sponsor and vote for the Fair Pay Restoration Act (S. 1843) so that women will be fully able to combat the injustice of unequal pay!

For More Information:

• Read the letter NOW sent to senators (PDF)
• NOW's story about Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co.
• Read the Supreme Court's decision in Ledbetter v. Goodyear (PDF)
• Institute for Women's Policy Research: "The Gender Wage Ratio: Women's and Men's Earnings" (PDF)