Ledbetter v. Goodyear: Fair Pay Act, Deadlines, and EEOC Filing

The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 is a federal law that gives workers a fair chance to challenge hidden pay discrimination. It resets the deadline for filing a discrimination charge every time an employer issues a paycheck affected by a past biased pay decision, so the clock does not run out on discrimination a worker had no way to see. President Obama signed it on January 29, 2009, making it the first bill he enacted in office.¹

Why Congress Passed the Law

Lilly Ledbetter worked as a supervisor at a Goodyear tire plant in Alabama from 1979 to 1998. Her starting pay matched the men doing the same job. Year after year, her raises came in smaller than theirs, and by the end of her career she was earning roughly 40 percent less than a male colleague in the same position. She only learned about the gap after an anonymous note listing male managers’ salaries appeared in her mailbox.²

Ledbetter filed a charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and won at trial. In 2007, the Supreme Court reversed that outcome in a 5–4 decision. Writing for the majority, Justice Alito held that Title VII’s 180-day filing clock started with each individual pay-setting decision, not with the paychecks that carried the effects of those decisions forward. Because Ledbetter had not filed within 180 days of each raise, the Court ruled her claim was time-barred, even though she could not have known about the discrimination when it happened.³

Justice Ginsburg’s dissent, read from the bench, argued that pay discrimination is different from a firing or demotion because it compounds quietly in every paycheck. She invited Congress to fix the problem, and Congress did so within two years.⁴

What the Fair Pay Act Changed

The Act overruled the Supreme Court’s interpretation by adopting what is called the paycheck accrual rule. A new violation occurs each time an employee receives compensation that results, in whole or in part, from a discriminatory pay decision. Every affected paycheck, benefit payment, or other form of compensation counts as its own discriminatory act and reopens the filing window.⁵

The law reaches beyond Title VII. It also amended the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the Rehabilitation Act, so the paycheck accrual rule applies to pay discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, and disability.¹

Congress made the Act retroactive to May 28, 2007, so it applies to all pay-discrimination claims that were pending on or after that date.⁶ The Act came too late for Ledbetter herself; her claim had already been dismissed.

Filing Deadlines Under the Act

The base deadline for filing an EEOC charge is 180 calendar days from the discriminatory act. In states with a fair employment practices agency that enforces a state law against the same type of discrimination, the deadline extends to 300 calendar days. Most states have such an agency, so the 300-day window applies to most workers.⁷

Under the paycheck accrual rule, each discriminatory paycheck restarts the applicable window. As long as you are still receiving compensation shaped by the biased decision, the deadline effectively renews every payday.

Age discrimination is treated slightly differently. The 300-day extension applies only when a state law prohibits age-based employment discrimination and a state agency enforces it. A local ordinance alone does not trigger the longer deadline.⁷

Who Is Covered

Because the Fair Pay Act amended Title VII, the same coverage threshold applies. Title VII reaches employers with 15 or more employees for each working day in at least 20 calendar weeks during the current or preceding year.⁸

Workers at smaller employers are not left with nothing. State anti-discrimination laws and the federal Equal Pay Act often cover them, and the Equal Pay Act has no minimum employer size.

What the Act Does Not Do

The Fair Pay Act changed a deadline, not a burden of proof. You still have to show that a pay decision was motivated by a protected characteristic such as sex, race, age, or disability. The law also does not raise the ceiling on damages or guarantee a larger award. What it does is keep the courthouse door open for workers who discover discrimination years after it began.

Back Pay and Damage Caps

A worker who wins a pay discrimination claim under Title VII can recover back pay for up to two years before the date the EEOC charge was filed, plus compensatory damages for emotional harm and, in serious cases, punitive damages. Federal law caps the combined compensatory and punitive damages based on employer size:⁹

15 to 100 employees: $50,000
101 to 200 employees: $100,000
201 to 500 employees: $200,000
More than 500 employees: $300,000

Back pay is not subject to these caps, which is why the two-year back-pay window matters so much. For long-running pay gaps, back pay often becomes the largest portion of the recovery. In Ledbetter’s own trial, the jury had awarded roughly $224,000 in back pay along with $3.3 million in punitive damages, and the district court cut the total down to $360,000 to fit within the statutory cap.¹⁰

The Equal Pay Act as a Separate Option

The Equal Pay Act predates the Fair Pay Act and runs on its own rules. It bars employers from paying men and women different wages for work that requires equal skill, effort, and responsibility performed under similar conditions.¹¹

A few practical differences make it worth knowing. You can go straight to court without first filing an EEOC charge. The filing window is two years from the last discriminatory paycheck, or three years if the violation was willful. There is no minimum employer size, so workers at very small businesses can use this law even when Title VII would not cover them.¹²

The trade-off is scope: the Equal Pay Act covers only sex-based pay differences. If the discrimination is based on race, age, national origin, or another protected trait, Title VII or another statute is the right vehicle. Many workers file under both laws at once when sex-based pay discrimination is at issue.

Retaliation and Wage-Discussion Protections

Employers cannot punish you for filing a charge, participating in an investigation, or opposing discriminatory practices. Title VII’s anti-retaliation provision covers anyone who has filed a charge, testified, assisted, or otherwise participated in an enforcement proceeding.¹³

The National Labor Relations Act separately protects your right to discuss wages with coworkers. Employer policies that forbid salary discussions or threaten discipline for sharing pay information violate federal law. This applies to most private-sector workers whether or not they belong to a union. Since talking to colleagues is often the only realistic way to spot a pay gap, this protection is closely tied to whether the Fair Pay Act ever gets used in practice.

How to File an EEOC Charge

You can file a charge online, in person, by mail, or by phone. The online route starts at the EEOC’s Public Portal, where preliminary questions confirm your situation fits the laws the agency enforces. After an interview, a staff member drafts the formal charge for your review and signature.¹⁴

Filing by mail requires a letter that includes your name and contact information, the employer’s name and address, an estimate of how many people the employer employs, a description of what happened and when, the reason you believe the action was discriminatory, and your signature. Filing with the EEOC automatically files with any applicable state agency, and the reverse is also true.¹⁴

The EEOC notifies the employer within 10 days of receiving the charge. Mediation is often offered and typically wraps up in under three months when both sides agree. If mediation is declined or fails, the EEOC investigates, a process that averages about 10 months. For Title VII claims, you need a Notice of Right to Sue from the EEOC before you can file a lawsuit in federal court, and you generally must wait 180 days after filing the charge before requesting one.¹²

1
GovInfo. Public Law 111-2 – Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009
2
Legal Information Institute. Ledbetter v Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co
3
Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Ledbetter v Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co
4
Supreme Court of the United States. Ledbetter v Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co – Ginsburg Dissent
5
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009
6
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Notice Concerning the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009
7
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Time Limits For Filing A Charge
8
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 2000e – Definitions
9
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 1981a – Damages in Cases of Intentional Discrimination in Employment
10
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Ledbetter v Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co EEOC Brief
11
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 USC 206 – Minimum Wage
12
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. What You Can Expect After You File a Charge
13
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 2000e-3 – Other Unlawful Employment Practices
14
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. How to File a Charge of Employment Discrimination