Legislation Watch

I have decided to jump back into the blog whole heartily. Kate posted asked me a question on the blog a few months ago about the recent Supreme Court decision on equal pay. I never responded because I am just that pathetic. Anyway here is my quick response and some action steps to correct the Supremes mistake.

Unfortunately I think that the Supremes were technically correct on their interpretation of the statute of limitations. Congress failed to make any distinction between pay discrimination and other more obvious forms of gender discrimination. This failure resulted in the same 180 or 300 days time line for filing an action concerning pay discrimination. Justice Ginsburg wrote a great dissent highlighting all of the difficulties involved in a woman discovering that she is paid less than a man, but the court and especially Alito were not interested.

Here is what you can do to help correct this bad decision. The Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was introduced into Congress on June 22. It is still in committee and has not reached the floor for a debate. The text of the bill is available at http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c110:1:./temp/~c1107HrJ6u:: It is House Bill 2831 and it needs your support. You can call your Congressperson and let them know that you support fair pay for women www.house.gov to find your Congressperson phone number. You can also call your Senators and ask them to introduce a version in the Senate. It sounds like a perfect bill for Hillary.

I am going to try to find a bill or issue each week to report on. Please call your Representatives, not enough people do and it really does make a difference, especially on non-flashy issues like fair pay.