Denying Equal Pay is Not Enough

Goodyear Insists that Lilly Ledbetter Pay Its Court Costs

by Dina Lassow

We’ve told you about Lilly Ledbetter, the manager in the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company Plant who sued for discrimination because she was being paid less than all the male managers.  The jury agreed with her, and awarded her over $3 million in damages.  The judge had to reduce that award to about $360,000, because of the caps on damages in Title VII, the employment discrimination law under which Ledbetter sued.  Then, the Supreme Court took even that money away, saying that she had filed her case too late – even though she was still receiving discriminatorily reduced paychecks when she brought her claim.   

Now, Goodyear has added insult to injury.  Not only did Goodyear deny Ledbetter an equal salary for most of the 19 years she worked there – it has now asked her to pay its costs for defending against her claim that she was entitled to fair pay.  Goodyear has written to Ledbetter’s lawyer, reminding him that the court said it could seek reimbursement of about $3000 in legal costs from Ledbetter and asking that the check be made out to The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company. 

Odd.  At the Congressional hearing on legislation to overturn the Ledbetter decision, the witness who testified on behalf of employers kept telling the Congressmen how willing Goodyear and other employers would have been to address Ledbetter’s discriminatory pay had she only brought the problem to their attention.  She did that – and now she’s the one who has to pay.  That sure doesn’t speak well of employers’ desire to fix problems.  Instead, it speaks volumes about the need for Congress to weigh in and make sure that women like Lilly Ledbetter don’t have to rely on their employers’ good will and have the right to challenge pay discrimination in court. 

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