Lilly Ledbetter, equal pay trailblazer, dies at 86

Lilly Ledbetter, an activist for equal pay whose legal fight against her employer paved the way for the Fair Pay Act, has died. She was 86. 

Ledbetter worked at Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company in Alabama for nearly two decades before learning from an anonymous note stuffed in her work mailbox that she earned significantly less than her male colleagues.  

“When I read it … my heart just stopped, almost, because I knew it was correct,” Ledbetter said in a January interview with NPR.  

“Me and those three men that was listed on that note — we four had the exact same job, and I was making about 35 to 40 percent, at that time, less than they were,” she said. “I just could not believe it. I was devastated, humiliated all at once, and it just floored me.” 

On the verge of retirement and unable to quit — but, also, unable to “let it go” — she filed a charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 1998 and a lawsuit against Goodyear in 1999.  

A federal jury in Alabama took her side and awarded her $3.8 million in 2003, but Ledbetter told NPR in 2009 that the sum was reduced to a $300,000 cap plus $60,000 backpay, none of which she said she ever saw.

Goodyear’s appeal of that verdict landed the case before the Supreme Court.  

The justices ruled 5-4 against Ledbetter on a technicality: that she filed her lawsuit too long after Goodyear made its initial decision to pay her less than her male counterparts. The time frame to sue was just 180 days. 

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg fiercely dissented. 

“The discrimination of which Ledbetter complained is not long past,” Ginsburg wrote. “As she alleged, and as the jury found, Goodyear continued to treat Ledbetter differently because of sex each pay period, with mounting harm.” 

Inspired by Ginsburg’s dissent, Ledbetter took her fight to Congress.  

The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act established that the 180-day limit to file a claim would reset upon each discriminatory paycheck, effectively extending the deadline almost indefinitely in cases of pay disparity.  

The bill was first introduced in 2007 but failed to garner the 60 votes necessary to break a Senate filibuster amid threats from then-President George W. Bush to veto it.  

However, in 2009, the measure passed both chambers and landed on then-President Obama’s desk. It was the first bill he signed into law.  

He honored her life on the social platform X on Sunday. 

“Lilly Ledbetter never set out to be a trailblazer or a household name. She just wanted to be paid the same as a man for her hard work,” the former president said. “But this grandmother from Alabama kept on fighting until the day I signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law — my first as president.” 

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who stood alongside Ledbetter as Obama signed the measure, wrote on X that the activist’s fight against pay discrimination brought “justice for our daughters and granddaughters.” 

“Lilly Ledbetter’s name is synonymous with courage, opportunity and progress,” Pelosi said. “After being denied fair pay, she sued, lost — and was ultimately vindicated by the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act that appropriately bears her name.” 

Ledbetter was invited back to the White House in 2014 for Obama’s signing of two executive orders that increased pay transparency, aimed at closing the gender pay gap. 

Born and raised in Alabama, Ledbetter died there Saturday as a result of respiratory failure, her family said in a statement, according to multiple reports. She is survived by two children and several grandchildren. Her husband, Charles Ledbetter, died in 2008. 

A film about her life, starring “Sharp Objects” actress Patricia Clarkson, recently premiered at the Hamptons International Film Festival. 

In 2009, when the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was passed, women made an average of 77 cents for every dollar paid to men. Today, they make an average of 84 cents for every dollar paid to men, according to U.S. Census Bureau earnings data for full-time, year-round workers. 

“We must move more aggressively than we have in the last 15 years for equal pay,” Ledbetter told NPR in January. “But I hope in my lifetime — before I check out of this life — that I can see women in this country being paid equitably compared to their male counterparts.”