[PatRacimora Cartoon Update!] Finally! Lily Ledbetter sees her fight signed into law!

[Note: Lilly Ledbetter is the blonde woman standing to your right of Steny Hoyer.] Big tip to PatRacimora for sending me this wonderful column by Gail Collins in the NYTimes. UPDATE: PatRacimora has created a special cartoon that is going up tonight around 6 p.m. ET! It is poignant that this new law won’t benefit Lilly personally, but she has brought about a huge change for millions of other women. Bless her!

Lilly’s Big Day

Obama told her story over and over when he campaigned for president: How Ledbetter, now 70, spent years working as a plant supervisor at a tire factory in Alabama. How, when she neared retirement, someone slipped her a pay schedule that showed her male colleagues were making much more money than she was. A jury found her employer, the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, to be really, really guilty of pay discrimination. But the Supreme Court, in a 5-to-4 decision led by the Bush appointees, threw out Ledbetter’s case, ruling that she should have filed her suit within 180 days of the first time Goodyear paid her less than her peers. [So many of us women remember that black day when the Supreme Court ruled against ALL of us. - Susan]

(Let us pause briefly to contemplate the chances of figuring out your co-workers’ salaries within the first six months on the job.)

Until the Supreme Court stepped in, courts generally presumed that the 180-day time limit began the last time an employee got a discriminatory pay check, not the first. More below:

In an attempt at bipartisan comity, the Senate decided to simply restore the status quo, rejecting House efforts to make the law tougher. Even then, only five Republican senators voted for it — four women and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, who is currently the most threatened of the deeply endangered species known as moderate Republicans.

Ledbetter, who was widowed in December, won’t get any restitution of her lost wages; her case can’t be retried. She’s now part of a long line of working women who went to court and changed a little bit of the world in fights that often brought them minimal personal benefit.

Another was Eulalie Cooper, a flight attendant who sued Delta Air Lines in the mid-’60s when she was fired for being married. Not only did a Louisiana judge uphold the airline industry’s bizarre rules requiring stewardesses to be young and single, Cooper was denied unemployment benefits on the grounds that by getting married she left her job “voluntarily.”

But she began a pattern of litigation that eventually ended the industry’s insistence that women needed to look like sex objects in order to properly care for passengers on airplanes. Next time you talk about US Airways Flight 1549’s spectacular landing on the Hudson River, remember that the three flight attendants who kept calm in the ditched plane were all women in their 50s and give a nod to people like Eulalie Cooper.

Patricia Lorance, an Illinois factory worker, went to court after her union and employer secretly agreed to new seniority rules that discriminated against the women who had been promoted in the post-Civil Rights Act era of the 1970s. Like Ledbetter, she lost her court fight because of a ridiculous ruling about timing, which had to be fixed by Congress.

Working at a series of lower-paying jobs after the factory closed, and then disabled by physical ailments, Lorance lost track of her case long before it finally wound its way through the Supreme Court. “But to this day, I am rather proud of myself because I was not a dumb person. I believe in just standing up and fighting for your own rights,” she said in a phone interview.

Ledbetter’s real soul sister is Lorena Weeks of Wadley, Ga. Weeks, now 80, had worked two jobs to support her orphaned siblings, then struggled with her husband to set enough money aside to assure their children would be able to go to college. A longtime telephone employee, she applied for a higher-paying job overseeing equipment at the central office. Both her union and the management said the job was unsuitable for a woman because it involved pushing 30-pound equipment on a dolly, even though Weeks regularly toted around a 34-pound typewriter at her clerical job.

Weeks v. Southern Bell helped smash employers’ old dodge of keeping women out of higher-paying positions by claiming that they required qualifications only men could fulfill. But it was a long, painful fight during which Weeks was terrified that she might lose her job entirely. “I felt like I was so alone, and yet I knew I was doing what God wanted me to do. Going back to the fact my momma had died working so hard. And I knew women worked and needed a place in the world,” she said.

It’s a good day for the feisty working women who went to court to demand their rights and the frequently underpaid lawyers who championed them. … Read all.

Also, from the White House blog:

Thursday, January 29th, 2009 at 12:00 pm

A Wonderful Day

It’s about justice. It’s about who we are. And on this “wonderful day,” we’re getting a step closer to both of those things.

That was President Obama’s message as he signed his first piece of legislation, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, which will make it easier for people to get the pay they deserve — regardless of their gender, race, or age.

“Ultimately, equal pay isn’t just an economic issue for millions of Americans and their families, it’s a question of who we are — and whether we’re truly living up to our fundamental ideals,” President Obama said. “Whether we’ll do our part, as generations before us, to ensure those words put on paper some 200 years ago really mean something — to breathe new life into them with a more enlightened understanding that is appropriate for our time.

Surrounded by leaders like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and with the new law’s namesake, Lilly Ledbetter, at his side, President Obama signed into law a powerful tool to fight discrimination.

The law is now up on our website, where you can review its full text and and submit your thoughts, comments, and ideas. …

ALSO via the White House blog are Lilly Ledbetter’s remarks at today’s signing:

I fell in love with those people campaigning with them. I have to tell you that. And that’s not on my prepared speech — (laughter) — but I have to tell you I love she and the President. And I just believe in them and their work so very much.

But thank you very much. Words cannot begin to describe how honored and humbled I feel today. When I filed my claim against Goodyear with the EEOC 10 years ago, never — never — did I imagine the path that it would lead me down. I have spent the past two years since the Supreme Court’s decision in my case fighting for equal pay for this day. But to watch you sign a bill that bears my name, the bill that will help women and others fight pay discrimination in the workplace, is truly overwhelming.

Goodyear will never have to pay me what it cheated me out of. In fact, I will never see a cent from my case. But with the passage and President’s signature today, I have an even richer reward. (Applause.) I know that my daughter and granddaughters, and your daughters and your granddaughters, will have a better deal. That’s what makes this fight worth fighting. That’s what made this fight one we had to win. And now with this win we will make a big difference in the real world.

On behalf of all the women in this country who will once again be able to fight pay discrimination, thank you. Thank you to all the senators and House members who fought for and supported this bill. Thank you to the many organizations and broad coalition that worked tirelessly for its passage. And thank you to the countless women around the country who rallied behind this legislation. It would never have happened without you.

With this bill in place, we now can move forward to where we all hope to be — improving the law, not just restoring it. President Obama, I want him to know that we’re very grateful for his support. And you can count on my continued commitment to fighting to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act — (applause) — and to make sure that women have equal pay for equal work, because that’s what this country is all about.

And thank you very much. (Applause.)