SUPREME COURT ISSUES KEY RULING IN EMPLOYMENT DISCRIMINATION

Is the media covering the story?  Are they covering it fairly?  Telling the facts?

Earlier this week, the Supreme Court issued a significant ruling in an employment discrimination case. 

The case: Lilly Ledbetter, who was a supervisor at Goodyear Tire & Rubber from 1979 until 1998, was the only woman working as an area manager.  She found out that while she was making $3,727 per month, her 15 male counterparts were being paid between $4,286 and $5,236.  She sued for employment discrimination, arguing that the differences in pay were based on assessments of performance over the course of her time on the job that were intentionally discriminatory - and she won! A jury found that Goodyear had discriminated against her on the basis of sex and awarded her backpay and damages.

The Supreme Court threw the whole case out, deciding that because the particular acts of intentional discrimination - that is, the assessments of her performance - had occurred a long time before she filed the case, that her 1998 suit was too late, even though in 1998 Goodyear continued to give Ms. Ledbetter pay at a lower level than her male counterparts.

The Supreme Court ruled that Lilly Ledbetter and others who are discriminated against in employment can't bring discrimination claims unless they file their case within the short period after the original intentionally discriminatory decision is made. In an opinion for the Supreme Court authored by Justice Samuel Alito, the court ruled that people who are discriminated against can't go to court to challenge the unequal pay that the are receiving - that is, the current effects of past intentionally discriminatory actions.

The decision weakens protections against employment discrimination. Often, people aren't aware that they are making less money than others and now, by the time they figure out what's happening, it's likely to be too late to sue.

A couple of other key points are worth noting:

* Justice Alito wrote the decision for the Court. He's one of the
newly appointed members of the Court.

* The decision was supported by 5 members of the Court: Justices Alito, Scalia, Thomas, and Kennedy, as well as newly appointed Chief Justice Roberts.

* Ms. Ledbetter and others like her can't bring suit to challenge the disparities in pay now that resulted from past intentional discrimination even if they didn't know that the earlier decisions were discriminatory at the time, unless they can show that the company concealed the information. The Court said "current effects alone cannot breathe life into prior, uncharged discrimination."

* The court also went out of its way to limit the scope of civil rights laws. Though the scope of affirmative action was not at issue in the case, Justice Alito's opinion argued that Title VII (the employment discrimination law) imposed no obligation to address the present effects of previous discrimination, even where that discrimination was blatant and resulted in "a racially unbalanced work-force."

* Justices Ginsburg, Stevens, Souter and Breyer disagreed with the Court's decision. Their dissent called the Court's interpretation of employment discrimination law "cramped" and said it was "incompatible with the statute's broad remedial purpose."