Lilly Ledbetter, a former Alabama factory manager whose lawsuit against her employer made her an icon of the equal pay movement, has died.
FILE - Lilly Ledbetter looks to the audience as President Barack Obama speaks in the East Room of the White House in Washington, April 8, 2014, during an event marking Equal Pay Day.
Two years later, former President Barack Obama signed into the law the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which gave workers the right to sue within 180 days of receiving each discriminatory paycheck, not just the first one. Ledbetter continued campaigning for equal pay policies for the rest of her life. Last week, she was awarded the Future Is Female Lifetime Achievement Award by Advertising Week, and a film about her life starring Patricia Clarkson premiered at the Hamptons International Film Festival.
The team behind the film, “LILLY,” issued a statement of condolence on social media. In her own statement, Clarkson said “portraying Lilly Ledbetter was the privilege of my lifetime.” The sense of urgency among advocates deepened after an annual report from the Census Bureau last month found that the gender wage gap between men and women widened for the first time 20 years. In 2023, women working full time earned 83 cents on the dollar compared with men, down from 84 cents in 2022.
Two years before she was set for retirement, she filed a lawsuit in 1999 and initially won $3.8 million in backpay and damages from a federal court. She never received the money after eventually losing her case before the Supreme Court. But a dissenting opinion from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who stated that the “ball is in Congress' court,” inspired Ledbetter to keep up the fight for better laws.
Equal Pay Wage Discrimination Fair Pay Act Gender Wage Gap Advocacy Supreme Court Pay Equity
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