Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. Case Study

Facts of the case

In this case, Lilian Ledbetter worked for a plant which was manufacturing tires and Rubber located in Alabama; Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company. She worked as a supervisor from 1979 to 1998, which was a 19-year career. While she worked there, the highest paid employee earned $5236 while the lowest paid earned $4286. When she ended her tenure, her salary was $3727. She, therefore, filed a complaint alleging sexual discrimination and inadequate evaluation of her performance resulting to her low pay compared to her male counterparts. She filed a complaint under the 1964 Civil rights Act, under Title VII, and under the EEOC.

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Upon determination, the jury ruled in favor of Lilian and consequently awarded her $3.5million, which was later reduced to $360000 by the District Judge. Goodyear appealed on the basis that under the Civil Rights Act the complaint ought to have been made within 180 days of the discriminatory conduct by the employer. Therefore, the complaint was limited by time. When making the decision, the jury had considered the discrimination of her entire career, but Goodyear argued that they should have only considered the salary of one year. The Court of Appeal for the eleventh circuit revised the decision of the lower court putting into consideration the argument by Goodwill, but not entirely implementing it.

Issue

The question at the supreme court was the circumstances which a complaint can be made by the plaintiff under Title VII, considering intentional pay continued even outside of the limitations period.

Majority opinion

The decision made by the majority was mostly policy driven based on Title VII of the Act. They considered the fact that for discrimination to occur, there has to be intent. Further, they pointed out that intent required discriminatory intent and employment practice. A combination of the two factors led to a complete violation. Under EEOC, the plaintiff was required to file a complaint within six months of the violation. The argument was that when the factors leading to discrimination are fulfilled, the time begins to run and the plaintiff has six months, whether they know or not. The court then held the Ledbetter's claim was untimely filed because the intent of discrimination must occur within the 180-day period. Justice Alito authored this decision in a 5-4 decision reaching that finding.

Dissenting Opinion by Justice Ginsburg

On the other hand, Justice Ginsburg together with Justice Steven, Justice Souter and Justice Breyer, are focused on issues which the majority give a blind eye. Justice Ruth Ginsburg disagreed with the other members of the bench and gave her passionate dissent arguing that the disparities involved in this case were different from other cases as this presented unique sets of circumstances. She starts with a compelling recitation giving her views on the issue.

She persuades the court using the "reason why" as to how she was discriminated and why she deserved compensation in consideration of the entire time she was discriminated. She then agitates and solves the issue by giving a background showing how Ledbetter worked in an area mostly occupied by men, who initially had their salaries similar to those performing the same duties. With time, her pay compared to those managers who were less senior than her or on her level got increase while hers was not. Compared to her counterparts, the salaries were significantly different. This argument makes one empathic and unequivocally understands the problem at hand. In the end, she begs the claim by stating that the discrimination, in this case, is different from others like failure to promote or termination which is often easy to identify; making one seek redress easily. According to her, when employees choose to discriminate on pay, it is usually not easy to identify. This is because they usually occur with small increments which are evident over time. Begging the claim is a persuasion technique, where the author's conclusion is validated within the claim.

Justice Ruth also used case law to persuade the court, the stare decisis' in the case of National Railroad Passenger Corporation v. Morgan, 536, where the court stated that when a disparity becomes sizeable and apparent is when an employee, like Lillian, can understand her plight then complain. Stare decisis is a legal principle which requires that the courts respect earlier decisions on the rule of law.it also means that the court follows a policy previous decided, and it is usually binding. In this case, Justice Ruth required the court to follow the decision in the case of National Railroad in regards to being realistic as to when the disparities became sizeable. It enhances how the judicial system can be predicted and gives the law a certain degree of certainty when a set of similar circumstances come into play. Consistency in decision promotes judicial system uniformity. It increases convenience for the courts as they are only required to apply previous principles. Prevailing circumstances are usually used to reach such stare decisis; thus it is an approach to solving legal problems which is practical. However, the courts can sometimes depart from such principles if they find the redundant or conflicting with specific laws. Justice Ginsburg also uses stare decisis in clarifying what constitutes unlawful employment. According to the majority opinion, giving a paycheck worth less to a female counterpart was considered discrimination. She uses the case of Bazemore V Friday, which asserts that any discrimination in regards to compensation is discriminatory. Whether such discrimination is based on race, gender or place of origin.

Justice Ruth's persuasive approach is also questioning how sound their application is to Title VII. She asks what activity can qualify as unlawful when it comes to compensation in employment. She answers that the decision to pay a person less than the counterparts alone qualifies as unlawful employment. Particular decisions regarding salaries are discretely different from subsequent and prior decisions. When answering this, every salary made and the decision made in regards to the salary was discriminatory; thus constituting practice which can be considered unlawful. In the case of Bazemore, every time a payment was made, unlawful practice occurred. Every time a paycheck was issued, it led to new discrimination every time. In Morgan's case, unlawful employment is presented in two acts, discrete acts which are not easy to find and those which are easy to identify and are cumulative and are recurrent. It takes a series of days or years, for certain conduct to be repeated to be considered unlawful. Given this, actions like harassment occurring one day cannot be actionable. Therefore, the repetitive nature of the acts requires that perhaps the management would have known they produce harm. The nature of such a hostile environment requires that certain conduct is repeated to produce specific results.

Therefore, Justice Ruth uses logic, factual and statistical argument more than oratory to assert that the entire period of the hostile environment should be considered to determine liability. It should not matter whether such acts fall outside the limitation of acts in the statutes, as long as they contribute to the claim within the period of filing. Therefore, the filing of charges at a later date should constitute a whole despite the conduct has occurred in the past. Further, she explains that disparities such as the ones experienced by Ledbetter are closely related to claims in hostile environments as opposed to one incident of discrimination. Just like Morgan's case, the findings were not rested on one paycheck, but a cumulative effect of different Acts.

She uses to appeal to authority and to reason to convince the court in further arguing that salary decisions should not be viewed as separate and occurring differently from others, as viewed by the majority in court. Appeals are used to persuade the recipient's sense of justice and fairness. She suggests that it would have been better if a different approach was taken, the approach is that could have been consistent with Title VII according to her was; every employment practice which was unlawful and sexually biased should be treated as unlawful. She further asserted that the previous decisions to the 180-day period, although not actionable were relevant in the determination of lawfulness or unlawfulness of conduct. Justice Ruth took into consideration, the workplace realities which led to her conclusion that the court's decision was not consistent with Article VII's remedial purpose.

Additionally, Justice Ruth uses rhetoric and logic to convince the other judges on the accessibility of information. She uses social proof to show that it is not easy to identify salary increment on employees. Such social phenomena show the expected outcome when people are in similar circumstances. Which in most cases will not be far from the truth. She asserts that it is easy to identify when an employee is given a transfer or a promotion. This is because most of the time such events are public and easily identifiable. Accordingly, when one is refused work or terminated, these events can easily be identifiable. However, disparities related to compensation are always concealed and cannot be easily identified. She gives an example of Goodwin v. General Motors Corp., 275 F. 3d 1005, 1008, where the plaintiff only knew about the colleagues' salary when he found a printout on his desk several years later. Therefore, employees' salaries' records are always confidential, and the only limited information is available; which can be used in the comparison. Sometimes employees keep under the wraps for the pay differentials amongst supervisors, or employees.

Conclusion

The courts in consideration of Justice Ginsburg asserted that putting her dissent into consideration, and this would open a floodgate, where employees who made a single decision 20 years ago can be sued. Philosophers and those in the legal fraternity talk about justice quite often. The method to uncover the method of persuasion includes the weighty truth on what justice entails.