The court’s interpretation, Ginsburg said, was out of step with modern wage discrimination and the realities of the workplace. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote a dissent that urged Congress to intervene. In other words, the court had not deemed the law itself to be unconstitutional but merely ruled that the way the statute had been written rendered it unavailable to Ledbetter. The Supreme Court had issued what’s known as a statutory ruling, which is distinct from a constitutional ruling. This was an absurd request - Ledbetter didn’t know how she was being cheated until she neared retirement - and it served to gut the ability of any woman to reasonably enforce the law. She would have had to file her claim shortly after Goodyear hired her, the court ruled. But in 2007, the Supreme Court held that the statute of limitations on her claims had expired, and she could no longer seek redress. Ledbetter took Goodyear to court, alleging a blatant violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which guarantees equal treatment in the workplace. By the time she retired, she was earning $3,727 a month: hundreds of dollars less than the lowest-paid man in her position, and significantly below the average man. But with each performance review, the men she worked alongside got bigger raises, and she gradually fell further and further behind. When Ledbetter had started, her supervisor salary was comparable to men in similar positions. Once she had left the job, she learned a disturbing fact. From 1979 until her retirement in 1998, Lilly Ledbetter worked at Goodyear Tire and Rubber’s plant in Gadsden, Alabama.
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