Just when you think Congress can't sink any lower, they surprise you. This past Tuesday (July 31), the House passed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which dangerously waters down the definition of employment discrimination.
This charming piece of legislation declares that an employer breaks the discrimination laws every time that employer sends an employee a paycheck, if the dollar amount of the paycheck results "in whole or in part" from a discriminatory decision -- no matter how long ago that decision was made.
The bill is named for a woman who sued Goodyear in 1998 over acts of discrimination that occurred in the early 1980s. Normally the statute of limitations requires that a plaintiff must file a lawsuit within 6 months of the act of discrimination. But the cautious Ledbetter waited almost 20 years to file her suit -- after she had retired and, just to be safe, after her former boss had died. She fought all the way up to the Supreme Court, which denied her claim.
In rushes Congress, eager to undo this unpopular, but legally-correct, decision. But instead of doing the logical thing -- that is, increase the limitations period to one, two, three, or whatever, years -- Congress chose to redefine "discrimination." If you suffer one act of discrimination, then every paycheck that is affected by that discrimination counts as a fresh act of discrimination, thereby re-starting the statute of limitations.
The problem is, this new definition would effectively remove any time limitation to discrimination suits. Even if you hold a series of different jobs, if you can argue that your current salary is lower today than it would have been but for some long-ago act of discrimination, you can file your lawsuit. Yes, discrimination is bad -- but so is breach of contract, medical malpractice, and slander; and yet, each of these civil wrongs has a concrete statute of limitations attached to it.
Politicians love semantics -- when poverty is too high, they redefine the poverty line; when kids are malnourished, they expand the definition of "vegetable" to include ketchup. And now, getting a paycheck counts as "discrimination."
And notice how cleverly Congress marketed the legislation. By calling it the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, they create the impression that the law will vindicate the martyred Ledbetter and rescue similarly-situated victims. But that's a shabby piece of political P.R. Just change the name of the bill slightly to, say, the "Bed wetter Fair Pay Act," and one gets closer to its juvenile peevishness.
Other than keeping the plaintiffs' bar in beer and skittles for years, the legislation makes no sense. If you want to give people more time to file discrimination suits, then change the statute of limitations, don't change the meaning of discrimination. Words are powerful tools; few are as powerful as discrimination. If Congress trivializes that word, then they shouldn't be surprised if someday, somebody asks what all the fuss is about discrimination.