Lilly Ledbetter Passed Away!

Lilly Ledbetter has passed away.

The woman responsible for former president Barack Obama's monumental equal pay law has passed away.

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris as well as Obama were notified of her passing.

Lily Ledbetter was an American activist who was the plaintiff in the United States Supreme Court case Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. regarding employment discrimination. Two years after the Supreme Court decided that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 does not allow employers to be sued for pay discrimination more than 180 days after an employee's first paycheck, the United States Congress passed a fair pay act in her name to remedy this issue, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009. She has since become a women's equality activist, public speaker, and author. In 2011, Ledbetter was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame. She was 86 years old.

She was born in Jacksonville, Alabama.

In 1979, Lilly Ledbetter was hired by Goodyear, working as a supervisor. After working for Goodyear for nineteen years, Ledbetter received an anonymous note revealing that she was making thousands less per year than the men in her position. Only as she neared retirement did she learn she was being paid significantly less than male colleagues with similar seniority and experience. This letter led her to file a sex discrimination case against Goodyear for paying her significantly less than her male counterparts. She successfully sued Goodyear but the judgment was reversed on appeal by the Eleventh Circuit. The lawsuit eventually reached the Supreme Court, which ruled against her because she did not file suit 180 days from the date of the discriminatory policy that led to her reduced paycheck, though the paycheck itself was issued during the 180-day period. The Supreme Court did not consider the issue of whether a plaintiff's late discovery of a discriminatory action would excuse a failure to file within the 180-day period because her attorneys conceded it would have made no difference in her case.

Ledbetter was hoping to see the day a woman would become president.

She endorsed Harris in July. Previously endorsed Hillary Clinton in 2016 bid.

The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 is a landmark federal statute in the United States that was the first bill signed into law by Obama on January 29, 2009. 

The act amends Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and states that the 180-day statute of limitations for filing an equal-pay lawsuit regarding pay discrimination resets with each new paycheck affected by that discriminatory action. The law directly addressed Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. (2007), a U.S. Supreme Court decision that the statute of limitations for presenting an equal-pay lawsuit begins on the date that the employer makes the initial discriminatory wage decision, not at the date of the most recent paycheck.

On January 29, 2009, nine days after he took office, Obama signed the bill into law. It was the first act he signed as president, and it fulfilled his campaign pledge to nullify Ledbetter v. Goodyear. However, by signing it only two days after it was passed by the House, he incurred criticism by newspapers, such as the St. Petersburg Times which mentioned his campaign promise to give the public five days of notice to comment on legislation before he signed it. The White House through a spokesman answered that they would be "implementing this policy in full soon", and that, currently they were "working through implementation procedures and some initial issues with the congressional calendar".

Former president Donald J. Trump, the so called protector of women had rolled back some of the regulations provided by the law.

In 2017, the Trump administration announced it was ending an Obama-era rule that required businesses with over 100 employees to collect wage data by gender, race, and ethnicity.