Republican Women Get What They Deserve
May 31st, 2007 | by Jersey McJones |Well, the fuckin’ idiot con voters (men who hate women and women who hate themselves) got what they wanted - a SCOTUS who rules to the very letter of the law with no room for interpretation whatsoever…
From the Salt Lake Tribune…
WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court on Tuesday limited workers’ ability to sue for pay discrimination, ruling against a Goodyear employee who earned thousands of dollars less than her male counterparts but waited too long to complain.
The 5-4 decision underscored a provision in a federal civil rights law that sets a 180-day deadline for employees to claim they are being paid less because of their race, sex, religion or national origin.
Without a deadline, Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the court, employers would find it difficult to defend against claims ”arising from employment decisions that are long past.”
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing in dissent for the court’s liberal members, urged Congress to amend the law to correct the court’s ”parsimonious reading” of it.
Lilly Ledbetter, a longtime supervisor at Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co.’s plant in Gadsden, Ala., said sex discrimination was behind a series of decisions that left her pay significantly below that of men who performed similar work.
After 19 years with Goodyear, Ledbetter was making $45,000 a year, $6,500 less than the lowest-paid male supervisor. The company said poor performance evaluations, not discrimination, were behind Ledbetter’s salary. She retired in 1998, shortly after claiming discrimination.
A jury sided with Ledbetter, but an appeals court overturned the
verdict because she had waited too long to begin her lawsuit.
Ginsburg, in a rare display, orally rebuked the majority, essentially saying that the ruling was too narrow, ignorant of the facts on the ground (there were plenty of aggravating circumstances that the court simply ignored), and presumptuous of the litigants understanding of the law. When does 180 days begin? When the complainant realizes a wrong has been done? When they retire? When they have already lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in pay, benefits, and entitlements? When does the 14th amendment override the equal pay laws? Can not the court rule that the 180 day rule is unconstitutional? The SCOTUS is packed with rightwing, lowlife, idiotic scumbags now, so we can expect the answers to such questions to be sleazy, stupid, and pro-corporate at every opportunity.
Democrats in the congress are now considering changing the law. Let’s hope it’s retroactive. I wonder what Bush will do and with what pen…
JMJ
10 Responses to “Republican Women Get What They Deserve”
By SteveIL on May 31, 2007 | Reply
Uh-huh.
Jersey, Jersey, Jersey, Jersey, Jersey, Jersey, Jersey.
When are you idiot libs going to realize that judges making up laws and rights from the bench, as the District judge did, and as Justice Ginsburg and the leftists on the SCOTUS wanted to, is unconstitutional, and is unconstitutional since unelected judges and Justices don’t make laws, and that unelected judges and Justices making up laws and rights lead to tyranny? Ginsburg did say one thing that was correct; urging Congress to change the law. She should have thought of that before ruling with the minority on this case. See, Congress writes the laws, not the Judicial Branch of the federal government.
I would also say that it is Ginsburg’s opinion that is narrow, not the majority ruling. In an environment where the market and performance help determine salaries and position, the idea that she should make the same amount as anybody else even after receiving some bad performance reviews in her past is ludicrous. Only unions and government believe in making a goal out of complacency, or of rewarding mediocrity, or even past bad behavior. Simply giving her more money to make the pay equal is unfair to those who actually earned the higher increases, regardless of whether or not they were men.
Add to this; ignoring the statute of limitations on cases like this lead only to increased government involvement in the courts, more unnecessary expense to business, unnecessarily increasing the cost of everything to all consumers, and the increasing of wealth of sleazy shyster lawyers, like John Edwards, who produce nothing.
I’ll answer your question with a question:
Where in the 14th Amendment does it say that it is the right of every American to be paid the same? If that’s the case, then I want whatever Barry Bonds is getting.
By Jersey McJones on May 31, 2007 | Reply
It’s a simple matter of sexual discrimination, SteveIL. The 14th Amendment “equal protection” clause is in question here. The 180 day rule is in question. 180 days from when? When the person realizes what has happened? When? Once again, you’re incompetent con judges have ignored the constitutionality of the law, ignored the real life circumstances of the case (a jury said the woman deserved recompence because of those circumstances), and instead ruled on the NARROW reading of the 180 day rule.
And you? Of course, you go with the simplistic and the narrow. Why do you oncs hate your own mothers and sisters and daughters anyway?
JMJ
By Jersey McJones on May 31, 2007 | Reply
The Roberts Court has made it quite clear that when it doesn’t like a lower court ruling it will find narrow issues of standing to overturn the rulings. Typical. Sleazy. Cons.
JMJ
By christopher Radulich on May 31, 2007 | Reply
I’m not sure why the 14th amendment was brought up.
From http://feminist.org/news/newsbyte/uswirestory.asp?id=10026
At issue in this case is whether in cases of wage discrimination, the statute of limitation applies solely to the original discriminatory act, or whether because of the cumulative nature of salary raises, each paycheck affected by the original discrimination is a new case of discrimination. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, responsible for handling cases of workplace discrimination, has held in the past that every paycheck should be considered a discriminatory offense, which extends the amount of time employees have to file suit against their employer. The Bush administration supports the six-month limitation to the original offense and has come to the aid of Goodyear, according to the New York Times.
So what the justices have done is overturn a long standing policy to help business against the individual. Sounds like normal Republican practices. I do believe that the party of Lincoln would reintroduce slavery if they thought it would help their business friends.
By Jersey McJones on May 31, 2007 | Reply
The reading of the 180 rule is just sooooooo narrow. The damage that is being done to this woman because of the prior discrimination continues today and on in the future. It affects her benefits and entitlements. The court is WRONG once again. Any woman that would vote Republican must be right out of her mind!
JMJ
By SteveIL on May 31, 2007 | Reply
Jersey, in case you hadn’t read the ruling, here it is. Alito’s opinion stated that Ledbetter would have had to have filed an EEOC charge within 180 days after she believed she was first discriminated against, not years later. If her bad reviews from early on in her days at Goodyear affected her salary at retirement, then that is the price one pays for those bad reviews.
That equal protection clause is equal protection under the law, not equal protection under the law except for certain people who need more protection under the law. That’s what your bullshit sleazy liberals have attempted to inject into the Constitution, and allowed other bullshit sleazy liberal lawyers to exploit for their own financial gain.
And if you think Congress is going to change the law to allow for no statute of limitations on these cases, you are sadly mistaken. No member of Congress would be stupid enough to let that go through knowing how they would be hurt financially in their campaign warchests.
By tammara on May 31, 2007 | Reply
from the wonderful wit of my paternal grandfather
“i’d rather have a sister in the whore house than a daughter in the republican party”
By Jersey McJones on May 31, 2007 | Reply
SteveIL, the bill is already being drawn up. You He-Man-Woman-Haters-Club (re: teh GOP) is shit outta luck. No more abusing women. Sorry about that, boyo.
JMJ
By SteveIL on May 31, 2007 | Reply
Better the elected officials drawing it up, even Democrats, than the tyranny of the Justices you seem to prefer.
Maybe one day you idiots will finally get how the Constitution works.
Dumbasses.
By SteveIL on Jun 1, 2007 | Reply
By the way, Jersey, there is only possible way I would think that the District Court’s ruling would have been upheld.
By law, employers are required to put up an EEOC placard in an easily accessible and visible spot in the workplace so that employees can view information on what their rights are under the EEOC and what to do in case of possible EEOC violations. I don’t remember exactly when this requirement was put in place, but I believe it was long before 1979, the year the plaintiff was hired by Goodyear.
If she could prove that at the time of Goodyear’s alleged discrimination against her that this EEOC information was not in an accessible and visible area, and thus denying her ability to know what her rights were under the EEOC, then she probably had a case that would have extended far beyond the statute of limitations. I don’t know if this ever came out at any of the trials or hearings, but it would seem not to have been an issue. Therefore, it must be assumed that the EEOC placards were there.
And besides; although companies sometime stupidly overlook mundane details like putting up EEOC placards, that is more the exception than the rule, and I would assume that Goodyear would have been smart enough to put up all the appropriate regulatory placards in the proper places to avoid just such litigation.