Constitutional Law

New Administration, Congress Set To Move On Employment Discrimination Ruling

The new administration and Congress are likely to move quickly on enacting legislation trumping a 2007 U.S. Supreme Court that stifled the ability of workers to bring employment discrimination claims, The New York Times reports. As the newspaper notes, President-elect Barack Obama, as a senator, sponsored a bill that would overturn the high court decision which tossed aside Lilly Ledbetter’s lawsuit against Goodyear alleging sex-based employment discrimination. Lower federal courts had upheld Ledbetter’s suit saying she was wrongly denied the same pay as her male co-workers to the amount of more than $200,000. The Supreme Court, however, in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. dismissed the lower court decisions, saying that Ledbetter waited too long to file the lawsuit against Goodyear. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has also been a consistent critic of the high court’s ruling, recently holding hearings on federal court cases that have limited workers’ access to courts. The Times reports that the legislation to be considered would “relax the statute of limitations under various civil rights laws, giving people more time to file charges.”

Full post as published by ACS Blog on January 05, 2009 (boomark / email).