NORTH CAROLINA EDITORIAL FORUM
By Lisa Grafstein
In 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a 5-4 decision which changed the rules for determining how long an employee has to raise a claim of wage discrimination. The plaintiff in that case, Lilly Ledbetter, lost a claim for 18 years of discrimination, but has lent her name to a proposal which would correct the interpretation of federal law and allow victims of wage discrimination to recover a portion of what they have lost.
Before the Ledbetter case, courts -- including the Supreme Court -- had used a “paycheck rule,” which recognized that, when an employee is underpaid on a discriminatory basis, each paycheck that employee receives is affected by discrimination, and the statute of limitations for a claim therefore begins to run when a discriminatory paycheck is issued. In most cases, employees do not become aware of wage discrepancies until well into their employment. Moreover, we know that a pay decision continues to impact a worker over her earning years. The National Women’s Law Center has calculated that women 24 and younger start out earning 6 percent less than their male counterparts, but that gap increases over time, resulting in women 45-64 earn 71 percent of what their male counterparts earn.
In 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a 5-4 decision which changed the rules for determining how long an employee has to raise a claim of wage discrimination. The plaintiff in that case, Lilly Ledbetter, lost a claim for 18 years of discrimination, but has lent her name to a proposal which would correct the interpretation of federal law and allow victims of wage discrimination to recover a portion of what they have lost.
Before the Ledbetter case, courts -- including the Supreme Court -- had used a “paycheck rule,” which recognized that, when an employee is underpaid on a discriminatory basis, each paycheck that employee receives is affected by discrimination, and the statute of limitations for a claim therefore begins to run when a discriminatory paycheck is issued. In most cases, employees do not become aware of wage discrepancies until well into their employment. Moreover, we know that a pay decision continues to impact a worker over her earning years. The National Women’s Law Center has calculated that women 24 and younger start out earning 6 percent less than their male counterparts, but that gap increases over time, resulting in women 45-64 earn 71 percent of what their male counterparts earn.
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