I hate the outcome, but the majority made the right call on this one.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday made it harder for many workers to sue their employers for discrimination in pay, insisting in a 5-to-4 decision on a tight time frame to file such cases. The dissenters said the ruling ignored workplace realities.

The decision came in a case involving a supervisor at a Goodyear Tire plant in Gadsden, Ala., the only woman among 16 men at the same management level, who was paid less than any of her colleagues, including those with less seniority. She learned that fact late in a career of nearly 20 years — too late, according to the Supreme Court’s majority.

The court held on Tuesday that employees may not bring suit under the principal federal anti-discrimination law unless they have filed a formal complaint with a federal agency within 180 days after their pay was set. The timeline applies, according to the decision, even if the effects of the initial discriminatory act were not immediately apparent to the worker and even if they continue to the present day.

And you know what -- the dissenters were correct -- the ruling ignores workplace realities. however, so does the statute in question, and judges are supposed to be bound by the statutes they examine. They are not a super-legislature which corrects the bad judgement and faulty craftsmanship of the lawmakers.

Captain Ed puts it very well -- and I wish i had written these words.

And the response to that for the Court should be: Write better laws. It is not the job of the Supreme Court to rewrite poorly-constructed legislation. Congress obviously intended for a short window of opportunity for these complaints, for whatever reason they had. The Supreme Court follows the law, unless the law is expressly unconstitutional. Fine-tuning dumb laws and badly-written legislation isn't the purview of the Court, but rather the responsibility of Congress.

Obviously, Congress needs to revisit this piece of legislation. Thankfully, we now have a Court which forces America's elected representatives to do their job, primarily by refusing to legislate from the bench. This gives hope that the last fifty years of judicial legislation have come to an end.

I hope Congress revisits this statute quickly and corrects the flaw in it. That will allow justice in the future, though it cannot undo the injustice caused by their previous sloppy work.

UPDATE: Why am I not surprised that the New York Times wants the court to serve as a super-legislature?

Posted by: Greg at 02:39 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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