IANAL, but it seems to me like the Court is sending an unambiguous message: an arbitrary administrative detail is enough to toss out a likely case of unfair treatment.
A conservative decision is one thing. This is something more. It smacks of rules-are-rules, no-exceptions, dumb-simple conservatism. That’s for people checking out volleyballs, not administering the law of the land.
That’s what Congress said. The Supreme Court is repeating it.
Ginsberg is probably right. She should resign and run for Congress, where she could be a direct voice for fixing the problem.
This boils down to the inexcuably silly idea voiced by Agent Foxtrot above – that the Supreme Court is supposed to be a super-legislature of common sense and fairness.
No.
It is Congress who created the “administrative detail” in the first place. So far as I can tell, the Court made a plausible reading of an ambiguous provision. Not a reading that I agree with, but the question of the exact moment when discrimination in pay occurs is a topic that I think reasonable people can disagree on.
So Congress wrote a law that is vague on this point, and Congress ought to fix it. I hope they will. I think it would be a shame for the company to get a free pass with what I think is pretty blatant discrimination against that woman.
What’s the alternative: that Congress pass laws that the courts can reinterpret to mean things that, while perhaps desirable, can be rewritten to mean whatever the courts think they ought to mean? I don’t like that idea at all. We can elect new people to Congress to change bad laws, but leaving so much power in the hands of judges isn’t the way the system is supposed to work.
The supreme court has only asserted the right to overrule the congress on matters that have a Constitutional basis. Basically, they can only “shoot down” congressional acts that are illegal, but doesn’t have much authority for shooting down congressional acts that are just “stupid”.
The way it works suits me just fine, too. I don’t want the Supreme Court to have much (any) power to change the law, considering that they’re not elected officials that have to answer to their constituents.
For those who have read the decision, is there any language in there where the Court makes mention of the fact that Congress can alter the statute at a later date? In the Kelo decision, where the majority didn’t seem too happy with its own decision, Stevens(IIRC) specifically said that there was nothing in the decision that prevented the Congress from altering the statute. There’s a few other cases where the Court was sort of boxed in by the language of the statute and had to interpret it the way it was written. This might be one of those cases and I was wondering if Roberts put in a signal to the Congress that it should probably re-write the law.
Not that I can tell, but I’ve so far only skimmed the decision so far. You can read it here (warning: PDF). But I don’t see the need for the SCOTUS to point out that Congress can alter a bill if it so chooses. Also, *Kelo *was (IIRC) a constitutional matter, not a statute interpretation matter. In that case, the court ruled the law constitutional, but the constitution didn’t mandate the law.
In the decision, Alito points to several SCOTUS precedents that support the majority’s interpretation (no surprise, I guess), most notably *Morgan *(2002). I haven’t read the dissent, but I’m sure it’s chocked full of precedent citing as well.
I’m not sure why you and others keep saying this. It’s not true.
Can you explain how the issuance of a paycheck (which is done by a computer) is and act of discrimination? That’s the issue. You need to do more than just “it’s not true”. You need to explain why.
It looks like the violation is of this part of the act: It’s a violation
Well, if the salary discrepancy still exists, can’t that be an ongoing act of discrimination? So lets say that you’re in class A and get $1000 a week. I’m in protected class B and get $500 a week for the same job, and when our salaries are set at first, our employer is engaging in unlawful behavior at that time.
It seems like you could also make the argument (even though the court didn’t rule this way), that each week in which you’re paid $1000 and I’m paid $500, the employer is discriminating in violation of the Act. So, each time the salary is paid, the employer is discriminating against me with respect to compensation, and that’s an unlawful employment practice.
You could and I probably wouldn’t argue too much either. But I think blaming the Supreme Court for this interpretation is harsh. Because it is vague and open to interpretation. The justices are Conservative and interpret it one way, or if they are liberal maybe they interpret another. What I think is the bottom line is that CONGRESS probably needs to change it so that it is beyond interpretation either way.
The court case cited in the majority opinion disputes that claim. From this analysis of Morgan (2002):
So, the clock starts at the initiation of the violation, not at acts which merely repeat that same violation. The exception being “hostile work environment” which is, but definition an ongoing situation, and not a discrete act. I believe the complaint would also not have been “time-barred” by the 180/300 days if the plaintiff could have show that a wage discrimination policy had still be in effect (ie, that new acts of discrimination were being made by the company).
It kind of sticks in my craw how the discussion keeps running away from how best to solve the problem back to the proper roles, functions, jurisdictions, blablabla of the institutions involved. This kind of cold, abstracted thinking is what people hate about government in the first place, and how it keeps running over the little guy.
(Apologies to anyone who doesn’t care about the little guy. But I think my point still stands even if you don’t.)
Note that the EEOC revised it’s recommendation for timeliness of filing claims in response to the decision in Morgan:
Well, but if the matter is vague and open to interpretation, then it makes perfect sense to blame the Court if you don’t like their interpretation. If the matter were so clear that the Court had to rule one way, then it wouldn’t be fair to blame them for ruling that way. But if the matter is such that is open to interpetation, then it’s fair to blame the court if you feel they interpreted incorrectly.
And, as a general rule, when there’s a case where you can interpret it so that one way would benefit those who have been racially discriminated against in stopping that discrimination, and the other way would benefit those who are doing the discriminating in continuing to discriminate, the Court should rule in favor of stopping the discrimination. This Court, as well as some of the people in this thread, obviously disagree with that rule.
If you prefer, we can invite **Bricker **to inflict the Socratic method on you. Some people find waterboarding to be more tolerable. 
Seriously, though, I think you see people talking about both aspects. What’s the right thing to do, and what’s the best way to do it. Think about all the extra-constitutional things Bush tries to do-- I’m sure he thinks he’s only trying to “solve the problem” the best way possible, too. Problem is, we don’t all agree on what the best way is… hence we set up clear procedures for deciding that.
Suppose the boss issues a directive on January 1, 2004 indicating that all black employees shall be fired on January 1, 2005. The directive is put on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying “Beware of the Leopard.” When the black employees are fired, is it already too late to file a discrimination claim?
Logically, it would seem that the clock shouldn’t start running until the discriminatory decision actually impacts the employee, i.e. when he or she is fired.
No.
That’s when the clock would start. But the posting of such a sign would also be prima facie evidence of a hostile work environment. I can hardly think of anything more hostile than that. For claims of hostile work environment there is no clock. Employees could file a “hostile work environment” claim at any time, and a “fired because of race” anytime within 180 days of being fired.
How to best solve the problem: Congress should amend its language to make its intent to remove the 180 time limit in such cases crystal clear.
I’m not aware that anyone has argued that the Court is above criticism. The question posed by the OP was (in my own words) whether the Court was practicing law or practicing politics. While I don’t like the outcome, I do believe that the decision isn’t the product of raw politics, just give away the country to corporations sort of a motivation. As has been said countless times, Congress wrote the law and wrote in the ambiguity. The root of the problem is really with the legislation, and the Court rightly points out that it is up to Congress to rewrite the law if it other intent for its application.
A guy with purple hair, nose rings, and eyeball tattoos wants a job at a Wall Street equity firm. He’s turned down because he doesn’t look like a banker. He sues – for sake of argument, he sues 2 years after he was rejected. There’s no law that establishes goths as a protected class, and 2 years is clearly outside the time limits for the law in question. Are you saying that, should the case come to the Supreme Court, the Court should award damages to Razor McGuffin because he was discriminated against, even if the law is not on his side?
I commented on it in an earlier response to you.