From a NYT account of Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber:
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg read part of her dissent aloud (itself an unmistakable sign of anger), and the tone of her opinion showed how bitterly she differed with the majority. She asserted that the effects of pay discrimination can be relatively small at first, then become far more serious as subsequent raises are based on the original low pay, and that instances of pay inequities ought to be treated differently from other acts of discrimination. For one thing, she said, pay discrimination is often not uncovered until long after the fact.
The majority’s holding, she said,”is totally at odds with the robust protection against workplace discrimination Congress intended Title VII to secure.”She said the majority”does not comprehend, or is indifferent to, the insidious way in which women can be victims of pay discrimination.”
“This is not the first time the Court has ordered a cramped interpretation of Title VII, incompatible with the statute’s broad remedial purpose,”she wrote. Her dissent was joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter and Stephen G. Breyer.
“Once again, the ball is in Congress’s court,”Justice Ginsburg wrote, expressing the hope that the lawmakers”may act to correct this parsimonious reading of Title VII.”
The text of Ginsburg’s dissent is, of course, available at the end of the opinion. NPR’s All Things Considered had an audio clip of her reading it. A transcript of the oral argument (November 2006) is accessible here.
Thank you, Justice Ginsburg, for caring so much, and for helping to keep hope alive.
–Ann Bartow
Update: From SCOTUSblog:
David G. Savage of the LA Times reports here on the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision in Ledbetter v. Goodyear, “a victory for employers”; Bloomberg’s Greg Stohr reports here; James Vicini of Reuters has this article on the ruling, which puts a six-month limit on pay discrimination lawsuits; at MarketWatch, Mark H. Anderson reports here.
The AP’s Mark Sherman has this story on the decision, which broke along ideological lines; here at NPR, Dahlia Lithwick discusses the ruling with Alex Cohen on “Day to Day”; CNN Supreme Court Producer Bill Mears reports here on the ruling and Justice Ginsburg’s “sharply worded” dissent; in the New York Times, David Stout has this article discussing the Court’s opinion and noting that Justice Ginsburg “read part of her dissent aloud (itself an unmistakable sign of anger)”; the Washington Post’s Robert Barnes has this article discussing the Court’s ruling; Joan Biskupic reports here in the USA Today.
Note the small number of female reporters listed.
Update 2: Paul Secunda has a fairly detailed analysis of the opinion at Workplace Prof Blog.
