Courts using Ledbetter decision to ‘undermine civil rights principles across the board.’
Courts using Ledbetter decision to ‘undermine civil rights principles across the board.’
Tomorrow, the House is set to take up the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which would overturn a Supreme Court decision that restricted a woman’s right to bring pay discrimination lawsuits. The House handily passed the bill last year, but Senate conservatives blocked it after President Bush threatened to veto it. On a conference call organized by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi today, Marcia Greenberger, co-president of the National Women’s Law Center, explained that the faulty Supreme Court decision has been stretched to cripple all kinds of anti-discrimination laws:
GREENBERGER: So now we’ve got these judges taking the Ledbetter decision to absurd lengths and saying that the most entrenched and invidious discrimination — now that those who have the courage and the knowledge and the ability, for the first time to combat are out of time. It is an outrageous approach, an undermining of civil rights principles across the board. It’s now causing real misery, as was described not only for women and their families in pay…but for all victims of discrimination.
Listen here:
Check out the Center for American Progress’s Fair Pay Calculator, and learn more about the fight for fair pay, here. Firedoglake has more.
Transcript:
QUESTION: Hi everyone. Just wanted to ask Marcia real quick, can you elaborate just a bit more on how the Ledbetter decision was — how courts have been able to use the language of the decision and — and extend it to other areas involving discrimination suits that you indicated.
GREENBERGER: Well, the Ledbetter decision basically undermined Title 7, which is a law that prohibits employment discrimination on the basis of sex, race, national origin.
So when the Supreme Court said that Lilly Ledbetter filed her claim too late under Title 7, the courts then automatically said that means anybody bringing any type of discrimination case under Title 7, certainly in the area of pay just to start with — whether it’s race or any of these other bases — will be held to the same, unrealistic and unreasonable, standards.
So as an initial matter, we now see race discrimination and other sorts — and national origin discrimination pay claims, et cetera — being thrown out of court — and, again, I want to emphasize, were not filed at all.
Then the courts have said, OK, if that’s what the courts said you had to do under Title 7, which is an employment discrimination law, let’s look at all of their other discrimination laws and maybe people can’t file those either.
Here’s an example of an especially crazy decision: A court in California — in Title 9 case, which is a law that prohibits sex discrimination in schools — said, a student who has just come to a university and sees there was discrimination in an athletics programs, cannot file a complaint (inaudible) discrimination (inaudible) they are suffering for the first time, because that discrimination had been going on for decades.
That’s — and another example — and the same in a housing case, where a court said that on the basis of the Ledbetter decision, people who were facing disability discrimination in housing that had been in effect for a long period of time — when they went to try to rent an apartment and filed right away were out of time because the discrimination had been going on for decades there.
So now we’ve got these judges taking the Ledbetter decision to absurd lengths and saying that the most entrenched and invidious discrimination now, that those who have the courage and the knowledge and the ability, for the first time to combat are out of time. It is an outrageous approach, an undermining of civil rights principles across the board. It’s now causing real misery, as was described not only for women and their families in pay, which is sufficient to fix it right away, but for all victims of discrimination.
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Fair pay?? What are we, some sort of capitalist country!!
oh, wait….
January 8th, 2009 at 2:23 pmThe Supremes sided with corporations over injured citizens time after time. Don’t forget the Exxon Valdez decision.
Bush isn’t alone in his ability to corporafornicate.
January 8th, 2009 at 2:25 pmRethugs believe that the proper place for women is in the church, the kitchen, and pregnant. Not necessarily in that order.
January 8th, 2009 at 2:28 pmLet’s see what happens in the Senate. The Democrats may be able to convince one of the Senators from Maine to support this bill.
Or, just let the Republicans filibuster. It would do the public good to see the Republican Senators make fools of themselves just like the Republicans in Congress did back in the “drill baby drill” August recess.
January 8th, 2009 at 2:28 pmThe GOP Bill of Rights: We usurp your rights, then send you the bill.
January 8th, 2009 at 2:35 pmIf I used Republican root cause analysis, I could claim their “Drill Baby Drill” protests caused our financial system meltdown.
But I won’t, as it’s patently absurd.
January 8th, 2009 at 2:40 pmThis is good news that Congress will take this up again. Truly an embarrassing unequal treatment under the law.
January 8th, 2009 at 2:50 pmCertain Justices are depriving people of their livelihood and ability to enjoy their freedoms. I therefore have no choice but to call for the impeachment and removal of the following Justices: Samuel Alito, John Roberts, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas.
Throwing the country into a downturn spiral should never be a lifetime job.
January 8th, 2009 at 2:51 pmOh yeah, people think they can sue for sex discrimination or sexual harrassment, but they can’t. First they have to go through a process with their state agency responsible for it, and let them deal with it. Then they wait. Some state agencies are better than others at dealing with this, and some are simply execrable. If the state agency hasn’t dropped your claim without due process, or made up a settlement on your behalf, then you may be able to file suit. After forced arbitration, of course.
In any case, it’s clear that this system exists for the sole purpose of keeping wronged parties from having access to the legal system.
Now imagine what conservatives would say if this sort of process were applied to, say, wrongful death suits!
The fact that the legal system has signed off on such an abrogation of the powers of their own branch of government is almost as sickening as the fact that the executive branch stole it. Ditto the whole habeus corpus thing; rights of the accused aside, it’s an abrogation of the rights of the courts to hear cases. The same could be said for the legislature’s refusal to enforce their own subpeonas. Each branch of government has only as much power as it’s willing to claim, and only one branch has been fighting for their own power for the past eight years, at the expense of the others, and of America in general.
January 8th, 2009 at 3:16 pmSaddler Says:
I therefore have no choice but to call for the impeachment and removal of the following Justices: Samuel Alito, John Roberts, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas.
A good case can be made against Thomas, since of all of them he flatly refuses to consider prior law or precedent, and just makes each argument up as he goes along. The others at least try to construct a legal argument based on laws and past rulings. Which is something.
January 8th, 2009 at 3:20 pmFourteen Defining Characteristics of Fascism
# 2. Disdain for the importance of human rights. The regimes themselves viewed human rights as of little value and a hindrance to realizing the objectives of the ruling elite. Through clever use of propaganda, the population was brought to accept these human rights abuses by marginalizing, even demonizing, those being targeted. When abuse was egregious, the tactic was to use secrecy, denial, and disinformation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVVa1IvHdKc
January 8th, 2009 at 4:31 pmIn the Leadbetter case the discriminatory actions occurred every time she received a paycheck. It is ridiculous to say that discrimination occurred on the first pay check and then every other paycheck is fine.
I do believe that a statute of limitations is reasonable in cases like this, but it should mean that the worker can only receive an adjustment to their paychecks for the last several years, not that their complaint has to be made within so many years of being hired.
I don’t know what has gone wrong with the courts, but they don’t seem to be applying common sense these days.
January 8th, 2009 at 4:36 pmWay to f uck over the people, SCOTUS.
Doing the job they were appointed to do…
January 8th, 2009 at 5:41 pm