In 1979, Lilly Ledbetter (April 14, 1938-October 12, 2024) was hired at a Goodyear Tire and Rubber plant in Gadsden, Alabama. After nineteen years, she received an anonymous note informing her that she was receiving significantly lower pay than many male employees with comparable or less expertise and seniority. Ledbetter's sex discrimination suit against Goodyear was initially successful but her win was reversed on appeal, including at the Supreme Court. A majority of justices claimed that she would have needed to have filed her lawsuit within 180 days of her very first unequal paycheck--many years earlier--even though she had no way of knowing that her pay was unequal for most of that time. However, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote a scathing dissent that (in a break from usual Supreme Court proceedings) she read aloud from the bench, and the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 became the first official piece of legislation passed during Barack Obama's presidency.
