Norton Helps Secure Return of Original Equal Pay Protections in Act She Enforced as Chair (7/31/07)

Washington, DC-The House today passed H.R. 2831, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), a former chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission under President Jimmy Carter, helped to draft. Norton, who administered the pay provision at issue (Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act) at the EEOC, said, "The May Supreme Court ruling in Ledbetter v. Goodyear was a huge throwback, which has made it necessary to repeat 40 years of history and reauthorize the original Title VII race and gender pay remedy in this corrective bill." The bill reverses the Ledbetter decision by restoring previous law and long-standing judicial interpretation of Title VII; that each paycheck that results from a discriminatory decision is in itself a discriminatory act and should reset the clock on the 180-day period for a worker to file a claim. The Ledbetter bill now also applies this standard to claims of age and disability discrimination, which was enacted after Title VII.

In April, Norton testified at the first hearing held on equal pay since she began introducing her legislation. In a floor speech, Norton rebutted claims that resetting the clock with each discriminatory pay check would expand the employer's liability and encourage claimants to sit on their rights to increase damages. "On the contrary," Norton said, "the limit to two years back pay is an incentive to women and minorities to claim their rights before liability for which they cannot be reimbursed piles on. The problem for Ms. Ledbetter and for virtually all who might file is the secret nature of wage information and the time it takes for a woman or Black person, for example, to even know that men or whites are being paid more or to get sufficient information to file a colorable claim."

The Norton Fair Pay Act, introduced in April with Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA), seeks equal pay for women for the comparable work men perform. Each year, this bill is introduced along with the Paycheck Fairness Act, which Norton also sponsors as an important procedural update of the basic procedures of the Equal Pay Act, which she also administered as EEOC chair.