Lilly Ledbetter

Lilly Ledbetter (born April 14, 1938, Jacksonville, Alabama, U.S—died October 12, 2024, Alabama) was an American activist whose equal-pay lawsuit against the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company led to the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, which ensured that women have fair and effective recourse against employers who discriminate against them. It was the first major bill signed into law by U.S. Pres. Barack Obama.

Early life and the anonymous note

After graduating from high school, Lilly McDaniel married Sergeant Major Charles Ledbetter, a highly decorated Army veteran. With the family struggling to support two children, she went to work, first as a manager at a H&R Block office and then as an assistant financial aid officer at Jacksonville State University. In 1979 she went to work at the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company plant in Gadsden, Alabama, working the 7 pm–7 am shift as one of the company’s few female supervisors. Nearly 20 years later, in 1998, as she neared retirement, Ledbetter received an anonymous note in her work mailbox that compared her pay to other men at the company doing similar work: the men were receiving between $4,286 (the lowest paid man) and $5,236 per month; Ledbetter was earning $3,727 per month.

In July 1998, Ledbetter filed a pay-discrimination charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). Shortly thereafter Goodyear reassigned the 60-year-old Ledbetter to a new position involving the lifting of heavy tires, which Ledbetter interpreted as retribution for her EEOC complaint. Ledbetter then retired in November and filed a lawsuit against Goodyear, charging pay discrimination under the Civil Rights Act of 1964. A jury found in her favor, awarding her $3.3 million, which was later reduced to $360,000.

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Appeals and Supreme Court ruling

Ledbetter would never receive this settlement, because Goodyear immediately appealed the decision and won. The Court of Appeals overturned the case because Ledbetter had failed to file her suit within 180 days of the initial act of discrimination, which was then mandated by law. Ledbetter countered that the company had kept the pay discrepancies secret, so she could not possibly have filed within the legal time frame; in fact, it was well known around Goodyear that any employees caught discussing their salaries would be fired. Ledbetter then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, and, in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. (2007), she lost. Once again, the Court based its decision on Ledbetter’s failure to file her suit within 180 days of the first act of discrimination.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg adamantly disagreed with the 5–4 decision, taking the rare step of reading her dissenting opinion from the bench: “The court does not comprehend, or is indifferent to, the insidious way in which women can be victims of pay discrimination.” She urged lawmakers to rectify the injustice: “Once again, the ball is in Congress’s court.” New York Senator Hillary Clinton, who was then seeking the Democratic Party’s 2008 nomination for the presidency, promised to submit such legislation.

Historic legislation

Ginsburg’s call for congressional action motivated Ledbetter to start a grassroots campaign on Capitol Hill, meeting with congressional staff, doing media interviews, and testifying before both chambers of Congress. It also led to a friendship between Ledbetter and Ginsburg. The two women corresponded, and Ginsburg even sent Ledbetter a signed copy of her husband’s cookbook, Chef Supreme.

On January 29, 2009, less than two years after the Supreme Court’s ruling, Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which eased the statute of limitations for equal-pay lawsuits; specifically, the new law amended the Civil Rights Act of 1964 so that every instance of discrimination (every discriminatory paycheck, for example, not just the first one) would trigger the 180-day claim-filing period. A joyful Ledbetter stood behind the president as he signed the bill. “It is fitting,” Obama said “that with the very first bill I sign—the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act—we are upholding one of this nation’s first principles: that we are all created equal and each deserve a chance to pursue our own version of happiness.” (Ginsburg proudly hung a copy of the new law on her office wall.)

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President Obama had discussed Ledbetter’s case frequently while on the campaign trail, and upon his election as president he invited Ledbetter to attend his inauguration, where she danced with the president at one of the post-inaugural balls. As First Lady Michelle Obama said about Ledbetter,

She’s long since lost her ability to gain any financial return from her Supreme Court loss, but she is out on the road, fighting hard to make sure that our daughters and granddaughters get paid equally for the work that they do. She’s a special lady, a working class lady, and a fighter.

Ledbetter agreed that though she will “never see a cent” from Goodyear, with “the president’s signature today, I have an even richer reward.” Still, Ledbetter said that the pay discrimination she experienced for decades had lowered her Social Security contribution and how much she could set aside for retirement. At age 80, she said, she was still living check to check, worrying about how to pay her bills.

Battling sexual harassment

In 2018, at the height of the Me Too movement that raised awareness of sexual harassment and abuse in the workplace, Ledbetter wrote a New York Times opinion piece detailing the sexual harassment she had also faced at Goodyear. “Almost two decades before I got the anonymous note about my unequal pay, I was sexually harassed at my job,” she wrote. She recalled such comments as, “If you don’t go to bed with me, you won’t have a job,” “You’re going to be my next woman at Goodyear,” and “Oh, you didn’t wear your bra today.” Those words, she said, “spoken to me by one of my supervisors many years ago, still crawl through my ears and down my spine. I remember my fear, both for my personal safety and because if I lost my job, I didn’t know how I would pay my kids’ college tuition, our mortgage and other bills.” This fear led her to keep the phone number of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission tucked in her pocket at all times, in case she needed immediate legal help.

Other acts of intimidation she says that she faced at Goodyear included breaking the windshield, damaging the tires and fender, and tampering with the braking and steering of her car. Ledbetter complained to her human resources representative, but her harasser never faced any consequences. Meanwhile, coworkers stopped speaking to her, and she was seen as a troublemaker.

So when the Me Too movement emerged, Ledbetter realized that this part of her story involving harassment was as much a part of her fight as her discrimination suit over pay. “Sexual harassment isn’t about sex, just like pay discrimination isn’t just about pay,” she said. “Both are about power. They are clear evidence that too many workplaces value women less. That was true for me in the 1980s and 1990s when I worked at Goodyear, and it is still true today.”