Lilly Ledbetter – Sandy Rosenberg

Fairness in the Workplace

June 1, 2018 | by delsandy | Sandy's Campaign Diary 2018 | No Comments

Should Maryland enact a pay equity law?

North Dakota, Illinois, Massachusetts, and Oregon are among the states that have done so.

I began the process of working on this issue after reading a newspaper article this weekend, headlined “How Boston Is Taking On the Gender Pay Gap.”

My first question: Do we need this bill in Maryland?

I emailed the General Assembly’s professional staff on Monday: “To what extent does the Massachusetts Equal Pay Act provide greater protections for employees than existing federal or Maryland law?”

If the reply indicates the additional protections are warranted, I’ll share it with advocacy groups to learn their interest in working on such legislation.

This would not be the first time I worked on fairness in the workplace.

I successfully introduced the Lilly Ledbetter Civil Rights Restoration Act of 2009, which expands workers’ opportunity to file a claim for unequal pay.

It was prompted by reading a court decision, a dissent writing by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Advisers but no consultant

May 9, 2014May 9, 2014 | by delsandy | Sandy's 2014 Legislative Diary | No Comments

I have political advisers, but I don’t have a media consultant.

He who represents himself has a fool for a client. I learned that in law school.

Even if you have a good political (or legislative) gut, you should bounce your ideas off of someone whose judgment you trust.

But after we decided to do a mailer emphasizing my civil rights record, I had to draft the text.

Fair Elections. Workplace Discrimination. Religious Freedom. Death Penalty. Holocaust Responsibility.

Sandy Rosenberg was the lead sponsor of major laws that protect our civil rights.

The Voters Rights Protection Act makes it a crime to influence or attempt to influence a voter’s decision whether to go to the polls to cast a vote through the use of force, fraud, threat, menace, intimidation, bribery, reward, or offer of reward. The Election Day robo calls violated this law. HB5/SB287, 2005

The Lilly Ledbetter Civil Rights Restoration Act of 2009 gives workers the opportunity to file a claim for unequal pay, reversing a 5-4 decision by the Supreme Court. HB 288, 2009

A business owned by an Orthodox Jewish family was provided an exception to the Sunday blue laws because they could not work on Saturday, their Sabbath. HB 624, 2011

Capital punishment is costly, is not administered fairly, burdens victims’ families, and does not deter murderers. We are a better state for ending the death penalty. SB 276, 2013

The French national railroad company made public its records transporting Jews and others to Nazi concentration camps. HB 520, 2011

I also drafted statements for other elected officials to make on my behalf. How do I compose something that sounds like them?

Google “the office holder and the issue.”

In the home stretch

April 2, 2014 | by delsandy | featured, Sandy's 2014 Legislative Diary | No Comments

Developments on three of my bills worthy of discussion…

My referendum petition bill was slowed when a senator offered a floor amendment. It will be debated tomorrow.

I’ve been advised not to intervene. The Senate committee that acted on my bill will handle it.

I thought my slots bill would be heard in the Senate Finance Committee. I called a staffer there for advice. It will go to the Senate Budget and Taxation Committee instead, he counseled.

I ran into the B&T chair at lunch and spoke to him about the bill.

“We’ve never done this before” asserted a lobbyist testifying before the subcommittee considering my legislation to adopt Justice Ginsburg’s dissenting opinion regarding the definition of supervisor.

“Our Lilly Ledbetter law three years ago adopted another dissent by Justice Ginsburg,” I replied.

Afterwards, I remembered that we had reversed a Supreme Court case regarding pregnancy discrimination. Our Attorney General’s Office confirmed my memory.

In 1977, we passed a law that the exclusion of pregnancy from a health plan was gender discrimination.

I’ve written a memo for the subcommittee members.

Dissenting from the bench, A statute in her chambers

February 11, 2014February 11, 2014 | by delsandy | featured, Sandy's 2014 Legislative Diary | No Comments

Justices Ruth Ginsburg and Elena Kagan recently spoke at a panel in New York

They discussed the Lilly Ledbetter case, where a 5-4 majority denied a female supervisor her day in court because she had not met the strict time limits the Supreme Court imposed for bringing lawsuits alleging workplace discrimination.

Justice Ginsburg read her dissent from the bench, calling on Congress to overturn Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company.

Justice Kagan called it “possibly the most effective dissent of this generation” because Congress reversed the Court’s decision by passing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009. A framed copy of the law hangs in Justice Ginsburg’s chambers, the New York Times reported.

I sponsored similar legislation that the General Assembly enacted.

This past June, Justice Ginsburg was again in dissent when a 5-4 majority defined “supervisor” in very narrow terms in a sexual harassment case, Vance v. Ball State University.

In a few weeks, I will testify on our post-Vance legislation, establishing a broader definition of “supervisor.”

I will let the committee know that Justice Ginsburg has a copy of Maryland’s Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.

I was honored to give her that bill at a meeting in her chambers.

Lilly Ledbetter and the facts of the case

October 18, 2012 | by delsandy | featured, Sandy's 2012 Legislative Diary | No Comments

Perhaps the President forgot the facts of the Supreme Court’s decision in Frontiero v. Richardson.

The Air Force had denied certain medical and dental benefits to the spouse of Lieutenant Sharron Frontiero. Her husband sued and won.

“Classifications based upon sex, like classifications based upon race, alienage, or national origin,” wrote Justice Brennan, “are inherently suspect, and must therefore be subjected to strict judicial scrutiny.”

The American Civil Liberties Union attorney arguing on behalf of Joseph Frontiero was Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

The Lilly Ledbetter law also protects both men and women – from unequal pay and other discriminatory treatment in the workplace. President Obama was not alone Tuesday night when he referred only to women as the beneficiaries of the law. Many elected officials describe our civil rights laws as protecting only people of a certain gender or race.

(Since Governor Romney never mentioned the Ledbetter statute in his response, one can only guess how it was summarized in his debate binders.)

I think I know why I remember the facts in Frontiero. I read it in my law school class on Sex Discrimination and the Law. My professor was Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Lilly and You

July 20, 2012 | by delsandy | featured, Sandy's 2012 Legislative Diary | No Comments

A lawsuit brought by a Goodyear worker in Alabama will benefit some of my constituents and countless others across the country.

That was the theme of my remarks below, after receiving the Community Leadership Award last night from Shalom USA, a weekly radio program produced by two Baltimoreans, Jay Bernstein and Larry Cohen.

—-

Several weeks ago, Jay emailed me, “Could you give a few lines on some of the things you’ve worked on recently of particular interest to the Jewish community?”

I sent him summaries of the legislation that he included in his very kind introduction, but I forgot to mention Lilly Ledbetter.

Who is she?

Lilly Ledbetter was a supervisor at Goodyear Tire and Rubber’s plant in Gadsden, Alabama, from 1979 until her retirement in 1998. She went to court because she was being paid $3,727 per month while her lowest paid male counterpart was receiving $4,286 and the highest, $5,236.

The trial court ruled that she had been discriminated against. The Supreme Court, however, found that she had waited too long. Because she had not filed a claim within 180 days of the first illegal act, she lost her case and could not recover any damages.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg took the unusual step of reading from her dissent in open court. She concluded, “Once again, the ball is in Congress’ court. As in 1991, the Legislature may act to correct this Court’s parsimonious reading of Title VII.”

In Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, an “unlawful employment practice” means discrimination “against any individual with respect to his compensation … because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.”

The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act amended Title VII to give a day in court for employees like her, who become aware that they have been denied fair pay months or years after the initial discriminatory pay check.

It was the first bill passed by the Congress and signed into law by President Obama. To guarantee that a Maryland court could not interpret our civil rights law to deny someone a day in court, I successfully sponsored our Ledbetter bill.

A Jew who has been denied fair pay will benefit from these laws. So will a member of another minority faith, as well as an individual in one of the law’s other protected categories.

Fortunately, we live in a country that recognizes the ongoing need to protect those who have been historically discriminated against – in the workplace, in the housing market, and in the voting booth.

We don’t always prevail – in the legislature or in the courts. Lilly Ledbetter was not compensated but others will because of her – people in our community and others like us.

—-

Jay Bernstein and I were thinking along similar lines. In introducing me, he did not limit himself to my legislation of particular interest to the Jewish community.

He concluded by discussing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the law that Lilly Ledbetter changed and Lyndon Johnson was advised he shouldn’t waste his political capital on because he couldn’t pass it.

“What the hell is the presidency for?” Johnson replied.

My Key Issues:

Tag: Lilly Ledbetter