Pay bias cases face 6-month limits: Supreme Court

By James Vicini

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court handed business groups a victory on Tuesday by ruling that federal law limits pay discrimination lawsuits to a six-month period after the alleged unlawful employment practice occurred.

By a 5-4 vote, the high court rejected the argument that an employee can sue over the amount of a current paycheck, based on employment decisions that occurred long ago outside the six-month, statute-of-limitations period.

Business groups and the Bush administration had argued the statute of limitations should begin when the alleged bias occurred. Businesses had been concerned about being held liable for pay claims dating back years before the filing of a discrimination lawsuit.

The ruling was a defeat for Lilly Ledbetter. She had sued Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., claiming that after 19 years at the company's plant in Gadsden, Alabama, she was making $6,000 a year less than the lowest-paid man for the same work.

Ledbetter claimed the disparity existed for years and was primarily a result of her gender. A jury agreed, but a U.S. appeals court overturned the award because she had waited too long to bring her lawsuit.

The Supreme Court's conservative majority agreed. Justice Samuel Alito rejected Ledbetter's argument that pay discrimination is harder to detect that other types of employment discrimination.

"Ledbetter's policy arguments for giving special treatment to pay claims find no support in the statute and are inconsistent with our precedents," Alito wrote in the opinion.

The courts four liberals -- Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg -- dissented.

"Today's decision counsels: sue early on, when it is uncertain whether discrimination accounts for the pay disparity you are beginning to experience," Ginsburg said in summarizing her dissent from the bench.

"If you sue only when the pay disparity becomes steady and large enough to enable you to mount a winnable case, you will be cut off at the court's threshold for suing too late," said Ginsburg, the only female on the court.