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Equal Pay Bill Is Now Law
By Marc Tracy
Employers, take note. Today, Barack Obama signed the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which allows workers to sue alleging pay discrimination any time within six months of receiving a paycheck that reflects the purported discrimination. Previously, according to a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling involving Ms. Ledbetter, the statute of limitations clock started running after the first allegedly discriminatory paycheck, and did not restart with each new one. (Ledbetter had sued her employer, Goodyear, for pay discrimination on the basis of gender, but her case was thrown out since it had not been filed within 180 days of the first offending paycheck, even though the discrimination had allegedly persisted for years. Ledbetter actually will not be able to collect damages under her eponymous law, though she said the law's passage represents "an even richer reward".)
The Bush administration had opposed the bill--critics assert that it will encourage lawsuits, and could also provide an incentive to employees who are being discriminated against in pay to hold off on suing in an effort to put themselves in a position to collect more damages down the line.
To the extent that the new law does produce frivolous actions, we hope--and trust--that the courts will strike them down, and establish precedent discouraging them. But it is difficult to feel sympathy for employers who have been paying some people less than others not because of relevant experience, education, or skills, but because of characteristics like gender or race. The new law does encourage lawsuits: it encourages people whose employers have been discriminating against them to sue to get them to pay for well-deserved damages. We're not sure that's such an infelicitous development.
BizBox prides itself on its decent and fair readership. So if there are any stragglers out there who are currently, well, discriminating against their employees, we'll just say that we hope they consider passage of this law yet one more reason to, y'know, stop.
Comments (1)January 29, 2009 2:43 PM
Comments (1)
I have to agree that the criticism that workers will knowingly except less pay for months or years just to get a bigger pay out in the law suit seems unfounded. After all, if a worker truly is missing out on pay and then collects that pay later, all the delay means is that it was basically a loan to the company.
I assume a minor inflationary adjustment and/or legal fees might be tacked on, but really the company would only be losing money if the court found that they had no right to it in the first place. I doubt that we will see pervasive frivolous lawsuits resulting from this.
Posted by synapticmisfires | January 30, 2009 4:45 PM
Posted on January 30, 2009 16:45