Introduction
A recurring theme or question this class brushes up against, often at the end of a class discussion, is the idea of the intended beneficiary versus the actual beneficiary of a law. And similar to many other cases (of law or legality) discussed, the Supreme Court case of Ledbetter v. Goodyear poses the question of who is left disadvantaged, long after a law has been enacted. The case poses other questions as well, of whether laws do bring about social or socioeconomic change, of how fair compensation is determined and how institutional forms of discrimination can be glossed over. You yourself may recognize the name Ledbetter from the first act that President Obama signed in office. We decided to look at the case historically, and start with a brief overview of how some acts concerning gender discrimination came about. In addition to our explanation of the case, we felt it would be helpful to tie in some notes on American feminism, and connect the issues presented with problems workers face today.
The ERA, a most famous un-ratified act.
A few years after the inclusion of the 19th Amendment allowing women the right to vote, women (and men) gathered at the Seneca Falls convention to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the first Women’s Rights Convention. It was here that the activist Alice Paul presented what she called the “Lucretia Mott Amendment,” named after the late 19th century women’s rights activist. Paul, a triple law degree earner, wanted to put into words a strong resolution of the idea of equality. To put in terms familiar from The Common Place of Law, she put legality into law. Paul would go on to travel to Europe, acting as leader of the World Woman’s Party that she created, and work closely with the League of Nations, the precursor to the United Nations. She would continue to organize, lead coalitions, and protest until her death in 1977.
The story of the ERA is a bit more frustrating. While it was introduced in 1923, it would go on to be presented to Congress every year until 1972. Alice Paul edited the act in 1943 and renamed it the “Alice Paul Amendment.” The sections now read:
- Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.
- The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
- This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.
But since the premier issue of the era was labor and workplace law, the act was put on the backburner. Instead, the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s brought on a new surge of women organizers demanding equality. And by the early 1970s, mobilization for the act effectively introduced the second wave of feminism in the United States, particularly in the Midwest. As scholar Erin Kemper writes, the ERA “profoundly affected the nature and trajectory of the second-wave feminist movement in Indiana” (Kemper). It created a divide among radical feminists and general reformists, but the movement was a huge step in unifying women’s discontent with the inequality they faced in the workplace and beyond. Feminism became that much more mainstream.
Unfortunately, even as the act was introduced year in and year out, it was never fully ratified. Though 35 states ratified it, another five repealed their ratifications. As U.S. presidential elections turned more conservative in the 1980s, support for the ERA dwindled even further. Despite hunger strikes and civil disobedience, the 1979 deadline of the ratification proposed by Congress came and went without full ratification, and the act was not reintroduced to Congress until 1982. It has been introduced every year since, but the rhetoric of the act is often claimed to be redundant, with other acts argued to have similar motives. But ERA supporters are still out there.
Equal Pay Act
From the early 20th century, women made up 24% of the workforce while making on average 59 cents to every dollar earned by men. With the rise of women in the labor force during World War II, due to labor shortages, it became inevitable to impose laws that would protect women from unequal pay. The first equal pay act was introduced to Congress in 1945: Women’s Equal Pay Act, which failed to pass due to disputes on the specific phrase “comparable work” used in the bill. The disagreement with the phrase stemmed from the implication that equal pay should be given for different positions in the same work environment. Throughout the 1950s, numerous bills for equal pay were brought to Congress, but all of them failed to move forward until 1961, during John F. Kennedy’s New Frontier campaign for the election. Esther Peterson, a women’s advocate who was appointed to Kennedy’s Women’s Bureau in the Department of Labor, submitted a draft bill on behalf of the Kennedy administration. Legal terms, such as “comparable work” were replaced with “equal work”, to signify that “jobs requiring equal skill, effort and responsibility, and which are performed under similar working conditions” made it possible to move the bill along. The Equal Pay Act intended to eliminate wage differences resulting from sex discrimination. This Act enforced employers to pay women and men the same wages for performing “equal work” in the same workplace. Equal work is defined here as “jobs requiring equal skill, effort, and responsibility, and which are performed under similar working conditions.” Although this bill was designed to protect discrimination against women even today, there is a significant pay gap in the workforce. Equal Pay Day represents how far into the year a woman work to earn the same amount of money a man earned the year prior. “Celebrated” in April, the day is a disheartening reminder to us all of the fact that many women must work 16 months to earn what men do in 12, for the same work. President Barack Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 into law on January 29.
Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co.
Lilly Ledbetter was born in Jacksonville, Alabama in 1938. She graduated Jackson High School, after which she passed H&R block tax preparation courses and started to work for them as an associate. She later on became an office manager at an accountant firm in Gadsden and in a gynecologists’ office. In 1979, Goodyear hired her in a supervisor position. According to one of her interviews, that job was exiting for her. The job as area manager was mostly occupied with male workers and she was among few female workers to be in that same position. They were nearly being paid the same rate for similar workload. In 1992, Ledbetter received an anonymous mail stating that she was under paid and all her male coworkers get more money than she did. She would get $3,727 per month; meanwhile, male area managers would get $4,286 per month. When she found out, she decided to file a lawsuit against the company. She filed a complaint with the EEOC, her case went to trial, and the jury gave her back approximately $3.8 million in compensatory and retributive damages for the pay discrimination to which she had been subjected. However, in 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court later overturned the lower court’s ruling. She lost only by one voice (5 out of 4). According to the Supreme Court, the Title VII only allowed victims to file a claim for pay discrimination within 180 days of the original pay-setting decision. The employee must claim her or his rights within 180 days of the discriminatory action. Thus, Ledbetter lost her case because she worked in a company for 19 years and filed a complaint only after retiring.
Despite her defeat, Ledbetter continued her fight for workplace fairness. She indicated in one of her interviews “I’ll be happy if the last thing they say about me after I die is that I made a difference. She does not want women and minorities to come across these types of discriminations. In January 2009, The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was the first law passed by President Obama. It reestablishes an anti-discrimination law that existed earlier to the Supreme
Court decision in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co.. This Act takes over the court decision by making clear that each discriminatory paycheck is a new act of discrimination, which resets the 180-day limit to file a claim. At the same time, the Act states that claimants still can recover back pay for a period of no more than 2 years before they encounter the discrimination.
Lilly Ledbetter has been traveling around the country for the last 10 years. She shares her experience and story with people and encourages women and minorities to claim their civil rights. She wrote a book, Grace and Grit: My Fight for Equal Pay and Fairness at Goodyear and Beyond, in 2012. This book was co-written with Lanier Scott Isom and talks about her life, her work experience with the Goodyear and everything that followed.
Ledbetter case gives hope to thousands of woman who want to be equally paid for the same job. President Obama seems to be integrated in the problem of wage gap very much and has been seriously involved in the prevention of pay discriminations at work after signing the Ledbetter Act. In his State of Union Speech he said” Today women make up about half of our workforce. But they still make 77 cents for every dollar a man earns. That is wrong, and in 2014, it’s an embarrassment”. Obama gave out two executive orders in support to the Equal Pay act. First, everyone now can request and find out information regarding his/her coworker’s pay rate. This will help everyone to find out if there is a discrimination of his or her paycheck. There are so many people who are treated unequally but due to the lack of information, they never find out about it. Secondly, the President signed Presidential Memorandum ordering the Secretary of Labor to create new guidelines requiring federal constructions to submit data containing compensations paid to their employees, including data by race and gender.
Conclusion
Does this mean that society is gradually getting rid of the gender discriminations? Does this mean that soon there will not be any barriers for females to success and move forward in their careers? These questions will never have completely positive answers. It is obvious that there will be many positive pay changes for women. However, this will not end the discrimination or gender inequalities at workplace completely. This is something like racism, which fades away but never disappears completely. These acts will be followed but the new ways will be created to discriminate women a work. Lilly Ledbetter was not the first or the last female who met pay rate discrimination. The vivid example of upper said is the Wal- Mart v Dukes act, which was actually denied. Betty Dukes was a 54-year-old Wal-Mart worker in California. In 2000, she filed a sex discrimination case against Wal- Mart with few other female workers. Regardless of her six years’ experience of work and progressive performance reviews, she was denied the training she needed to improve for a higher salaried position. The women were paid in low pay rates compared to men in similar positions. They also had to wait longer for the management positions compared to men. In June 2001, the lawsuit began in U.S. District Court in San Francisco. The accusers sought to represent 1.6 million women who were currently working or who had previously worked in a Wal-Mart store since December 26, 1998. In June 2004, the federal district judge, Martin Jenkins, ruled in favor of class certification. However, Wal-Mart appealed the decision. The Supreme Court agreed to hear Wal-Mart’s appeal in 2006. In 2011, the Supreme Court ruled in Wal-Mart’s favor, saying the accusers did not have enough in common to constitute a class. Gender fairness will be achieved when people will be able to access and enjoy the same rewards, incomes and occasions regardless of whether they are women or men.
Class Connection
There is a connection between Lilly Lebetter v Goodyear and “The Common Place of Law” by Patricia Ewick & Susan S. Silbey. The case is a part of the third law type, “against the law”. Injustice has been committed against that individual and action is required for their benefit. Against the law requires resistance. This is what happened to Lilly Ledbetter. She was treated unequally and the law seemed not to be on her side. She was not able to work with the law, because the law excludes her from its legal protection. It is interesting how both cases were first approved by district judges and later on were rejected by the Supreme Court. This looks like a bias in Supreme Court decisions that are related to women.
Bibliography
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http://www.afj.org/multimedia/videos/content/unequal-justice-wal-mart-v-dukes
http://www.equalrightsamendment.org/history.htm