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The Senate last night passed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which reverses a Supreme Court decision limiting a worker’s ability to sue an employer over sex-based wage discrimination.
Approved by a 61-36 vote, the measure now goes back to the House for a final vote, which proponents of the bill said they expected to come quickly.
It requires a second House vote because that chamber combined the Ledbetter legislation with a measure the Senate did not vote on. It originally passed the House Jan. on a 247-171 vote.
President Obama made support of the measure a point of his campaign.
The bill would make it easier for a worker to sue their employer for pay discrimination on the basis of sex, age, race religion or country of origin.
"We need to send this to the president as soon as possible so he can sign it into law," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, in a statement issued after passage.
Sen. Reid said the bill is "a victory for American workers. It restores the law to where it was prior to the Supreme Court decision.”
The majority leader said “Republicans and Democrats united around ensuring that hardworking individuals across this country should be paid fairly, and that they will have a fair shot to fight back when they are not. There is no reason anyone should take home a paycheck different from his or her coworker's based solely on that worker's gender, race, age, ethnicity or disability. And in a historically weak economy such as ours, American families can no longer afford it.’
The measure could not have passed without guidance from Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and the leadership of the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md.
Sen. Mikulski said the measure would be the first bill the new president would sign and called passage an enormous victory.
Under the Supreme Court’s Ledbetter ruling, if an employee does not file a claim within 180 days of their employer's decision to pay them less, they are barred forever from challenging the discriminatory paychecks that follow.
The case was brought by a retired factory worker, Lilly Ledbetter of Alabama, who brought an action after she discovered she was paid less than male workers at the plant doing similar jobs.
Debra L. Ness, president, National Partnership for Women & Families, said in a statement that the Senate had taken “an enormous step forward to restore fair pay protections by passing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act this evening.
She called the measure “a modest and targeted response to a harmful and unjust U.S. Supreme Court ruling that made it just about impossible for victims of pay discrimination to seek justice in the courts, no matter how severe the discrimination they face. Today, the Senate stood with the American people and committed to ending workplace discrimination.”
“This is the best evidence yet that a new era has dawned, and the lawmakers holding office today will support fair pay,” she added. “We look forward to President Obama signing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law very soon.”