President Obama on Friday called on people to adopt the spirit of Lilly Ledbetter, whose unwillingness to give up, even after she lost her pay discrimination suit before the Supreme Court, is the kind of approach that leads to major social progress.
“That spirit is what all of us have to adopt,” Obama said Friday during a White House event commemorating the seventh anniversary of his signing the law named after her. That law changed the statute of limitations on pay discrimination suits so the clock doesn’t run out on others like it did in Ledbetter’s case.
“That’s the spirit that built America,” Obama said. “And that’s the spirit that I intend to keep pushing as long as I have the privilege to be in this office.”
The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was the first law he signed as president, and he used its anniversary to propose a rule that would require bigger companies to report demographic employee-pay information to the government. Obama said “social change never happens overnight. It is a slog; and there are times where you just have to chip away and chip away and then you may have some breakthroughs.”
Ledbetter, the 77-year-old Alabaman whose suit against Goodyear prompted the eponymous law, introduced “her friend” Obama at the event, which tennis great Billie Jean King also attended.
Obama said American women earn just 79 cents for every dollar white men in the same jobs make, while black women earn just 60 cents and Latinas, only 55 cents. But conservatives have disputed that analysis as overly simplistic, and say it blames workplace discrimination for pay differences that are more likely to reflect family decisions.
Still, Obama said the pay gap is “not right.”
“What kind of example does paying women less set for our sons and daughters?” Obama asked.
Obama also called on Congress to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act, which the House passed in 2010 but didn’t clear the Senate. It would allow victims of pay discrimination to sue for punitive damages and bar employers from retaliating against workers who compare compensation, among other things.
Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., who authored a competing pay-equity bill, said Obama should not have issued the new data rule.
“The way to make meaningful, lasting progress on equal pay for women isn’t unilateral presidential action,” she said in a statement. “I remain fully committed to forging a bipartisan consensus in Congress to update our laws and ensure women and men have the information they need to negotiate the salaries they deserve.”
