On January 6, 2009, the opening day of the 111th Congress, the House passed a rules package that will likely result in passage later this week of two employment-related bills and presentation to the Senate as a single piece of legislation. The reintroduced Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and Paycheck Fairness Act are identical to bills that were passed by the 110th Congress but stalled in the Senate.  The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act (H.R. 11) would amend Title VII to allow claims brought within 180 days of receiving any paycheck affected by a discriminatory pay decision, no matter how far in the past an act of discrimination allegedly occurred. This legislation would reverse the controversial Supreme Court decision in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., 550 U.S. 618 (2007), in which the Court read Title VII’s statute of limitations narrowly, requiring such a suit to be brought within 180 days of the actual discriminatory decision.  Senate Democrats fell three votes short of ending a filibuster but the bill is likely to pass now that the Democrat majority has increased in the Senate.

The Paycheck Fairness Act (H.R. 12) would provide for punitive and compensatory damages in Equal Pay Act actions, make it more difficult for employers to establish the affirmative defense that a pay disparity is due to a factor other than sex, and eliminate such a defense where the employee could demonstrate an alternative employment practice that served the same business purpose without producing wage differences.