February 3: Kaptur Observes Third Anniversary of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act
"As the longest-serving woman in the U.S. House of Representatives, I voted for this bill that was signed into law three years ago because it reaffirmed a core American principle: you should get equal pay for equal work.
"Women today still only earn 77 cents for every dollar a man earns, on average. This is a glaring inequality in this country, where all Americans should be treated equally," said Kaptur. Data from the U.S. Census Bureau in 2010 showed that women working full-time, year-round were paid less than their male counterparts in every state across our nation including Ohio, where the median earnings were $35,284 for women and $45,859 for men.
The law is named after Lilly Ledbetter who after working for 19 years of working at an Alabama Goodyear tire factory, discovered that she was making 20 percent less than her male coworkers, even though many had less education and less years on the job.
While a jury found Goodyear to be guilty of pay discrimination, the Supreme Court dismissed her case because there is a six-month statute of limitations for filing a discriminatory lawsuit that resets with each new discriminatory paycheck. Essentially, Ledbetter needed to have filed a complaint within six months after her first discriminatory paycheck. However, Ledbetter did not discover the pay disparity until almost two decades after working at Goodyear.
After the Supreme Court ruling in the Ledbetter case, the Democratic Congress and the Obama Administration approved the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act in 2009 so that women and other workers can now have their day in court without being held to these statutes of limitations.
"The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act strengthens America's families because, when women are underpaid for equal work, entire families suffer from lost wages—this also hampers our country's economic growth. I am committed to ensuring that all men, women, and children in America's families get a fair shake," Kaptur said.