Her journey took 10 years, all the way to the U.S. But instead, she decided that there was a principle at stake, something worth fighting for. She could have accepted her lot and moved on. President Obama said: “Lilly lost more than $200,000 in salary, and even more in pension and Social Security benefits - losses she still feels today. It reinstated the long-standing practice of ensuring that women who are discriminated against have the right to sue as long as their unequal pay continues. The first bill President Obama signed into law was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, in January 2009. In 2007, the court narrowly held that employees may not bring suit under federal law unless they have filed a complaint with a federal agency within 180 days of receiving their first discriminatory paycheck.
Her case against Goodyear made it all the way to the U.S. “It was very humiliating,” she said in a recent interview, “to learn that I was being paid so much less than my white male peers for doing the exact same job and doing it well.” Someone had anonymously passed her a note alerting her to the fact that she had been paid 40 percent less than her male colleagues. Her fight for pay equity and women’s rights took a decade - ‘and a big dose of grit and stamina’ - and continues today.Īfter decades at her “dream job” as an area manager and supervisor for Goodyear in Gadsden, Ala., Lilly Ledbetter retired from the company in 1998 - and promptly filed a lawsuit against her former employer.
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