Supreme Court Limits
Discrimination Suits
By DAVID STOUT,
NYTimes on the Web, May 29, 2007
WASHINGTON, -- The Supreme
Court ruled today, in a case of considerable interest to business and industry,
that employers should be protected from lawsuits over pay discrimination linked
to gender or race and based on decisions made or acts committed years ago.
Voting 5 to 4 after apparently heated deliberations, the justices found in favor
of the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company and against Lilly M. Ledbetter, who
worked for 19 years at the company’s plant in Gadsden, Ala., and was paid
substantially less than men doing work at the same level.
The majority found against Ms. Ledbetter, saying she could not show that there
had been intentional discrimination in the 180-day period before she complained
to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in March 1998, shortly after she
retired following an unwanted transfer. Goodyear’s argument that federal
law protected the company from claims concerning discrimination that occurred
before Sept. 26, 1997 — or 180 days before Ms. Ledbetter filed her E.E.O.C.
action — was upheld.
Today’s ruling affirmed a decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the
11th Circuit, in Atlanta, which overturned a Federal District Court jury’s award
to Ms. Ledbetter. The jury had awarded her more than $3 million in back
pay and compensatory and punitive damages, but the judge lowered the amount to
$360,000 because of limits imposed by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The high court’s majority rejected the position of other federal appeals courts
and the commission that the “paycheck accrual rule” should be followed, meaning
that each pay period that fails to correct past discrimination should be
regarded as a new incident of discrimination.
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., writing for the majority, said that “current
effects alone cannot breathe life into prior, uncharged discrimination.”
“Ledbetter should have filed an E.E.O.C. charge within 180 days after each
allegedly discriminatory pay decision was made and communicated to her,” Justice
Alito wrote. “She did not do so, and the paychecks that were issued
to her during the 180 days prior to the filing of her E.E.O.C. charge do not
provide a basis for overcoming that prior failure.”
Alluding to an earlier Supreme Court ruling, Justice Alito conceded that the
180-day deadline is “short by any measure.” But he went on, “This short
deadline reflects Congress’s strong preference for the prompt resolution of
employment discrimination allegations through voluntary conciliation and
cooperation.” Joining Justice Alito were Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.
and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Anthony M. Kennedy.
The Bush administration had entered the case on Goodyear’s behalf. The
case, Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, No. 05-1074, was
argued on Nov. 27. Neal D. Mollen, an employment-law attorney in
Washington who filed a brief backing Goodyear on behalf of the United States
Chamber of Commerce, told Bloomberg News that today’s ruling has “great
importance for employers.”
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg read part of her dissent aloud (itself an
unmistakable sign of anger), and the tone of her opinion showed how bitterly she
differed with the majority. She asserted that the effects of pay
discrimination can be relatively small at first, then become far more serious as
subsequent raises are based on the original low pay, and that instances of pay
inequities ought to be treated differently from other acts of discrimination.
For one thing, she said, pay discrimination is often not uncovered until long
after the fact.
The majority’s holding, she said, “is totally at odds with the robust protection
against workplace discrimination Congress intended Title VII to secure.”
She said the majority “does not comprehend, or is indifferent to, the insidious
way in which women can be victims of pay discrimination.”
“This is not the first time the Court has ordered a cramped interpretation of
Title VII, incompatible with the statute’s broad remedial purpose,” she wrote.
Her dissent was joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter and
Stephen G. Breyer.
“Once again, the ball is in Congress’s court,” Justice Ginsburg wrote,
expressing the hope that the lawmakers “may act to correct this parsimonious
reading of Title VII.”
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