Members of Congress should take enough time to make sure they understand what H.R. 2831, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, really would do.
The American Benefits Council, Washington, has issued that plea in a letter to Congress.
Members of the House Education and Labor Committee recently voted 27-20 to approve H.R. 2831.
The bill is supposed to counteract the effects of a May 29th U.S. Supreme Court decision that appears to reduce the amount of time that employees have to file wage discrimination suits under the Civil Rights Act.
The bill would treat the issuance of each paycheck to be a separate discriminatory act if the paycheck is less than it otherwise would have been due to the employee’s sex, race, color, religion or national origin, according to Debra Friedman, a lawyer in the Philadelphia office of Cozen & O’Connor.
The bill would give employees the ability to file a pay discrimination claim many years after a discriminatory pay decision was made, Friedman says.
“The legislation essentially eliminates the statute of limitations for pay discrimination claims in many circumstances,” Friedman writes.