Federal Judiciary

Ledbetter Nonsense

By AndrewHyman

People for the American Way (PFAW) is currently running radio ads against Sen. Norm Coleman because Coleman helped confirm Justice Alito, who in turn later wrote the Supreme Court?s opinion in Ledbetter v. Goodyear.

The fact is that the Court?s Ledbetter decision was perfectly reasonable. It was a case of statutory construction, and so Congress is free to change the statute whenever Congress wants. In fact, the Washington Post is reporting today that Congress may do so imminently (and President Bush may veto).

The Ledbetter case involved equal pay for women. Obviously, gender disrimination should be (and is) illegal. The problem involves the 180-day statute of limitations. The Supreme Court has interpreted it to run from the initial discriminatory pay decision, rather than from each subsequent paycheck. If it ran from each paycheck, then of course the statute of limitations would be basically meaningless.

In my opinion, there would be no harm if Congress were to amend the statute simply to say that the 180 days runs from when the victim reasonably could have known that the pay decision had been discriminatorily made. But of course the Democrats want to gut the statute of limitations entirely, and demagogue the issue during the upcoming presidential campaign, so don't expect a rational resolution of this matter any time soon.

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Full post as published by ConfirmThem on April 23, 2008 (boomark / email).