Yesterday, President Barack Obama signed his first piece of legislation in to law, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. This piece legislation would not have been necessary except for the activist right wing judges appointed to the Supreme Court by George W. Bush and his GOP predecessors, who overturned her judgement because of a phantom 180 day period between when the first instance of discrimination occurred and when she filed her suit had passed.
In the law, there was no such 180 day period from date of first offense, but the corporate-friendly justices used that reasoning to overturn her judgement. I’m sure you’re all going to hear how this is going to put small businesses out of business or how it’ll actually hurt women because now small businesses will no longer hire women…
Lilly Ledbetter was a supervisor at Goodyear in the Birmingham area. She proved in court that her company had denied her raises by falsely claiming in her personnel records that she was a bad employee. She proved that she had been discriminated against and was awarded back pay of over $200,00, money that she had rightfully earned. It’s no cheaper for a woman to clothe and feed a family than it is a man and giving woman less money for the doing the same job as a man is not just wrong, but morally wrong.
Goodyear believes that this is the end of it and there will be no further repercussions from their blatant discrimination. Good year needs to do the right thing and reimburse Lilly Ledbetter for her lost wages and court costs. I am going to boycott Goodyear until they make amends and ask all of my readers to do the same, and to copy this and pass it on to everyone that you know. We can start an E-mail campaign and possibly bring the justice for Lilly Ledbetter that the Bush Court denied her.
