As posted on BeSpecific, in January 2009, president Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, which supersedes the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Ledbetter vs. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., Inc., 550 U.S. 618 (2007).

Ledbetter had required a compensation discrimination charge to be filed within 180 days of a discriminatory pay-setting decision (or 300 days in jurisdictions that have a local or state law prohibiting the same form of compensation discrimination). The Act restores the pre-Ledbetter position of the EEOC that each paycheck that delivers discriminatory compensation is a wrong actionable under the federal EEO statutes, regardless of when the discrimination began. As noted in the Act, it recognizes the “reality of wage discrimination” and restores “bedrock principles of American law.”