The U.S. Supreme Court, with its newest justice, Samuel A. Alito Jr., leading the way, has undergone a sea change in its approach to employment law this term, taking an axe to the protections afforded by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the federal law prohibiting discrimination in the workplace, and greatly restricting employees’ rights to seek redress for pay discrimination. The court’s decision in its most important employment case, and its failure to decide two others on the merits, will likely lead to far more litigation for both employers and employees in this area of the law.
In Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., 127 S. Ct. 2162 (2007), the most significant employment case of the term, the court abandoned long-standing Supreme Court precedent regarding pay discrimination and, relying primarily upon a case which had been superseded by an act of Congress, held that each particular salary-setting decision by the employer is discrete from prior and subsequent decisions and must be challenged by filing a charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) within 180 days or lost forever. This is so, even if the effects of the initial discriminatory decision were not immediately apparent to the worker and even if each new pay check perpetuates the discriminatory pay.
