Reflections on Ledbetter, the Statute

Thanks to Dan and everybody for letting me guest blog over here this month. I am usually found at Workplace Prof Blog or speaking only to my students at McBlogmick (my class blog), so having the option to publicly embarrass myself on subjects beyond workplace law will be a real treat. I'll start small and stick with a workplace subject first, though.

I hesitate to express value judgments in my analysis of workplace issues at those other places because of the nature of those fora, but I'd like to do that here a little, starting with the first-ish bill that Obama signed into law, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. The statute changes the statute of limitations for when an employee can file a charge of discrimination in pay on the basis of race, sex, age, disability, religion, national origin, or color, restoring it to what the circuits had held before the Supreme Court issued its decision in Goodyear Tire v. Ledbetter almost 2 years ago.

There was a lot of rhetoric on both sides of this legislation--it was going to eliminate discrimination v. it's a field day for the trial lawyers--but no one seemed to ask this question: is it really going to have any effect? My gut reaction is, not much, and I'll explain why after the jump.

All the Ledbetter Fair Pay act does in terms of enforcement is to extend the time to file a charge to within 180 days of a discriminatory paycheck or other decision. It makes these claims easier to bring then, in that plaintiffs will not be time barred so easily. But the time bar was just one obstacle that, frankly, didn't even really exist until the Ledbetter case. It seems to me that other obstacles operate with much more force, and this statute does not address those.  Other, more powerful obstacles include a fear of retaliation and lack of access to legal help to pursue the claims.

I'll address the lack of legal help first. Discrimination cases are difficult to win or get enough of a settlement for to warrant an attorney taking the case on contingency, and most workers can't afford the kinds of hourly fees to pay an attorney up front. There is a wealth of empirical research on this winnability point. And this statute doesn't make these cases more likely to pay, which would enable attorneys to take them. The pay difference (amount of damages) may be a big deal to the individual plaintiff, but a relatively small amount in terms of recovery for the attorney. And attorneys can get fees if they win a judgment, but these cases almost never get to trial, when they get to trial most often lose, and when plaintiffs win at trial, are twice more likely to get reversed on appeal than when defendants win. And even where they win, plaintiffs can only recover damages for the two years prior to the charge being filed, so the available recovery is relatively limited.

And retaliation is a bigger problem. Pay discrimination cases are almost always going to arise in the context of continued employment. Particularly in a weak economy, no one is going to want to give their employer a reason to look for problems by suing for pay discrimination. Some kind of backlash is highly likely. Research has shown that people who complain about discrimination are viewed negatively even when the viewer knows that the person was actualy discriminated against. On top of that retaliation is very difficult to prove, and even if a person can prove they were discharged in retaliation for filing a charge, they're out of work during the time they're pursuing that claim. And at least some industries are tightly knit enough that the person wil be unlikely to be hired anywhere else, either.

So, the statute opens the door to the one group of people who don't have retaliation to worry about, people just like Lilly Ledbetter, those retiring. Maybe that will be enough.