[Anyone] our supreme court does it again!

[totem at laplaza.org]

> This time, they support employers who illegally pay women less than men
> for doing the same work. I'm sending this to anyone who surely cares
> about daughters' [sisters', wives', nieces', etc] equal pay for equal
> work:
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/29/
> AR2007052900740.html
> The blog below is from Matthew Yglesias
> I’m not sure I’ve blogged about Lilly Ledbetter’s case before, and if I
> have I haven’t done so very much, but watching her convention talk was
> a stark reminder of exactly how absurd the Supreme Court ruling that
> made her famous was. If you didn’t hear her talk, the point is that she
> worked for many years at Goodyear Tire. One day, she found persuasive
> evidence that she’d been the victim of illegal wage discrimination on
> account of being a woman. She sued. She won before a jury. But after a
> series of appeals a 5-4 Supreme Court decision let Goodyear off the
> hook on the theory that her suit had been filed too late — she needed,
> they said, to have filed her claim within 180 days of the first
> instance of illegal discrimination even though she wasn’t aware that it
> was occurring at the time. As The Los Angeles Times editorialized back
> in April:
> 
>      As a narrow reading of the law, that’s all well and good. But as a
> prescription for redressing harm — the intent, after all, of
> anti-discrimination law — the court’s approach is impossibly binding.
> Most cases of discrimination, including the one before the court in
> Ledbetter, are difficult to discern at once, for the simple reason that
> most discrimination is covert. In the case of Lilly Ledbetter, a jury
> found that her employers had unfairly paid her less than male
> colleagues over a period of years. When Ledbetter discovered the
> disparity, she sued, but it was years after the initial discrimination,
> so five justices of the Supreme Court stood on a sterile legal
> principle in order to deny justice.
> 
> At any rate, even if you accept the conservative justices’ theory that
> their perverse reading of the existing law is correct, that points to
> the need to change the law. Which is exactly what there was a move to
> do in congress, but it’s been filibustered by the Senate Republicans
> and so, basically, if you want to get away with illegal discrimination
> you just need to make sure you can cover it up for at least 180 days.
> 
> Ledbetter’s not a political professional, but her story’s pretty
> compelling and important and one kind of wonders why so many Senate
> Republicans think it’s so important to help companies get away with
> illegal discrimination.
> http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/

 The End of America; Letter
> of Warning to a Young Patriot by Naomi Wolf. Wanna know more?
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/apr/24/usa.comment