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Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2007

Date: July 30, 2007
Location: Washington, DC
Issues: Women Judicial Branch


LILLY LEDBETTER FAIR PAY ACT OF 2007 -- (House of Representatives - July 30, 2007)

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Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for moving so quickly to fix this bill because we really can't wait. Fixing this bill, and thank you for taking us back to 1964, because that is about what happens here. The bill as it was intended, and this is not a hypertechnical statute of limitations bill. In fact, interestingly, the statute of limitations is not involved at all. It is the same 180 days as it always was.

The bill before us reinstates the law as it was consistently applied and interpreted by the courts, including the United States Supreme Court before, during and after I administered this law as the Chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and administered this very section. Once before the Supreme Court misread this, and Congress rushed to change it. And here we are back to a Supreme Court really reaching very hard away from what we had already fixed in the 1991 Civil Rights Act.

I want to remind my colleagues that the first pay cases under this act were not brought by women at all. They were brought by black men who were working in Southern factories in a segregated part of those factories, paid less than white men. Imagine if we said, Look, you fellas, go and see if you can find out what the white men, who won't even let you work in the same part of the factory, are earning. Of course we didn't. And of course nobody can require that of women or African Americans, who are just as affected by what we do today as women are.

Imagine, the most secretive information a person has, besides your medical information, is how much money you earn. How many in this Congress, before your earnings were a matter of public record, knew how much the person sitting beside you earned? And particularly, if you are a minority, a woman or a minority, you are not going to go up, and if you are, you are not going to find out.

We have got to fix this. The American people have demanded it. We have to fix it for women. And remind you, we have to fix this for black people, for people of color who bring the majority of pay cases in our country today.

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