Ledbetter Bill: Gregg Votes No, Shaheen Votes Yes
LEDBETTER
New Hampshire Union Leader
Aoife Connors
Boston University Washington News Service
Jan. 27, 2009
WASHINGTON – The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, passed Tuesday by the House and last week by the Senate, is the first legislation to be sent by Congress to the White House since President Obama was inaugurated.
The act “recognizes that if people are doing the same job they should each be getting equal pay,” said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., who voted for the bill when it passed the Senate last Thursday 61-36.
Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H. voted against the bill. In a statement to the Union Leader on Tuesday, Gregg said while the act “is well-intentioned, it will be a boon for trial lawyers and will drive up litigation costs while driving out many small businesses from the marketplace.”
Gregg said, “The Ledbetter bill means a wage discrimination lawsuit can be filed regardless of how far in the past the original act of discrimination occurred or when the individual should have first discovered the discriminatory practice.”
The bill overturns the 2007 Supreme Court ruling in Ledbetter v. Goodyear that made it harder for U.S. citizens to bring a pay discrimination case to court. The decision restricted the time period in which victims of discrimination could sue employers for pay inequity to 180 days after the discrimination first took place, rejecting the argument that each paycheck was a violation of the law.
Lilly Ledbetter a supervisor for 19 years at Goodyear Tire and Rubber in Gadsden, Ala., sued the company after discovering a large gap in her salary and that of her male colleagues doing the same job.
The act will restore the legal guarantee that every discriminatory paycheck constitutes a violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Employees will have 180 days to file their charges from the day they receive a discriminatory paycheck.
In the early ‘60s, fair pay legislation was passed in this country, Shaheen said. “As we saw in the Lilly Ledbetter Supreme Court case, it didn’t prevent some companies from treating women differently to men, when it comes to pay.”
She said when she chaired a women’s committee in New Hampshire in the ‘80s “for every dollar a man received a woman received 59 cents.” Today, she said, a woman earns 77 cents for every dollar a male employee receives.
“You should have an opportunity for redress if you are discriminated against,” Shaheen said.
Sen. Gregg said, “It is due to this unprecedented and open-ended approach, and not to my unwillingness to address the issue of discrimination, that I could not support the Ledbetter bill as it was written.”
The House passed the legislation 250-177 with Rep. Paul Hodes, D-N.H., and Rep. Carol Shea-Porter, D-N.H., voting for it along with every House member of the New England delegation.
Last year the House passed similar legislation but it was blocked in the Senate by Republicans and the Bush White House threatened to veto the bill if it passed.
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