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On the third anniversary of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, the bill's namesake wrote a special article describing the events that led up to President Obama's signing it into law. Below is an excerpt. Click here to read the entire piece.
I'd been at Goodyear almost 20 years, and was still making 20 percent less than the lowest-paid male supervisor in my same position. I'd been praised and promoted by my bosses, but rewarded with much smaller raises than my male coworkers got...
So I went to court, and won. The company appealed and the case went all the way to the Supreme Court, where Goodyear won by one vote. The Court said I should have filed my complaint within six months of the first unfair paycheck I'd received almost two decades earlier. There was nothing the men could do that I couldn't - but I couldn't fight for fair pay if I didn't even know I was being paid unfairly. Like so many women, I've never asked for or gotten a handout. I've only asked for a fair shot.
Barack Obama heard about my case and went to work. His grandmother worked in a bank her whole life, including long after she'd hit the glass ceiling. She even had to train the men who were paid higher salaries to do the work she'd showed them how to do. And he never wants his two girls to be disrespected in the same way.
As a senator he fought to give women enough time to file a complaint after we learn we're being discriminated against and underpaid. He believes we should reward hard work and responsibility. He stands up for the middle class because he's struggled, too. And he continues to fight because he knows what happened over a generation can't be fixed overnight.
I had to wait more than a decade and a half before I even knew I was being discriminated against. Within a week and a half after President Obama was inaugurated, he signed his name to the law that bears mine. Three years ago today, he made it the very first one he enacted.
