Lilly Ledbetter, Whose Fight for Equal Pay Changed U.S. Law, Dies at 86

Lilly Ledbetter had worked for 19 years at a tire plant in Alabama when she was sent an anonymous note: her pay was as much as $2,000 a month less than what men were receiving in the same supervisory job.

Ms. Ledbetter sued for sex discrimination in 1999 in federal court in Alabama, and a jury awarded her more than $3 million in back pay and damages. But the decision was reversed on appeal.

Undeterred, she pursued the case to the United States Supreme Court, which in 2007 also ruled against her, saying that she was too late — that she should have filed her claim within 180 days of receiving her first unequal paycheck, citing a narrow interpretation of the law.

In a vigorous dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said it was all but impossible for Ms. Ledbetter to have known of her unfair pay in such a time period.

To close this loophole, Congress passed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act in 2009, which was the first piece of legislation that President Barack Obama signed into law, shortly after his inauguration. It effectively eliminates the statute of limitations on fair-pay claims.

At the signing ceremony in the White House, Ms. Ledbetter, who had retired by then from her job at a Goodyear tire and rubber factory, stood behind Mr. Obama shaking her head and wringing her hands in seeming disbelief.

Ms. Ledbetter, who became a national symbol of unequal treatment of women in the workplace and a hero to many for her yearslong persistence in fighting against the status quo in court, in Congress and on the political campaign trail, died on Saturday in Alabama. She was 86.

The cause was respiratory failure, her family said in a statement, which did not specify where in Alabama she died.

Ms. Ledbetter came to fully embrace her role in the women’s rights movement.

She became a public speaker, addressing the 2008 and 2012 Democratic National Conventions; worked closely with the National Women’s Law Center; and wrote a memoir, “Grace and Grit.” A movie inspired by her life, “Lilly,” premiered at the Hamptons Film Festival this month, with Patricia Clarkson in the title role.

“Lilly Ledbetter never set out to be a trailblazer or a household name,” Mr. Obama said in a statement on Sunday. “She just wanted to be paid the same as a man for her hard work.”

Ms. Ledbetter, who married the same year that she graduated from high school, 1956, and raised two children, was hired in 1979 as a supervisor by Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company in Gadsden, Ala. She was one of the few women in her role.

Early on she was the target of sexual harassment, she wrote in an opinion column in The New York Times in 2018. When she complained to a human resources official about harassing statements that a male supervisor had made to her — “You’re going to be my next woman at Goodyear” and “Oh, you didn’t wear your bra today” — she was told to stay home while an investigation was conducted.

Ms. Ledbetter refused, since the man involved was not required also to stay home.

“If he stays, I stay,” she recalled insisting.

In 1998, as she neared retirement, Ms. Ledbetter received an unsigned note saying that she was being underpaid compared with men in the same job. She was earning $3,727 per month, while 14 men in the same position, including those with less seniority, were making $4,286 to $5,236 per month.

Over nearly 20 years, the pay disparity had added up to more than $200,000, as well as lowering her pension and Social Security benefits.

“I was devastated,” Ms. Ledbetter said in 2021 at a Forbes Magazine women’s summit. “We needed that money to pay college tuition and the mortgage and the other necessities of life.”

In early 1999, she filed suit in Federal District Court in Birmingham, Ala., claiming wage discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Although her pay when she was hired had been the same as that of male colleagues, over the years she received smaller raises; that was because her supervisors had given her negative job evaluations based on her sex, she claimed.

Over time, some men in the same job were earning 40 percent more than she was, she contended. And all along, she later said, she was in the dark because Goodyear employees stood to be fired if they disclosed their salaries.

The jury in Birmingham awarded Ms. Ledbetter $3.8 million in back pay and damages, which the judge reduced to $360,000. The United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta, overturned the verdict entirely.

The Supreme Court, in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., upheld the appeals court in 2007, citing a provision of the Civil Rights Act that required claims to be filed within 180 days of a discriminatory action. The ruling was 5-4, with the majority decision written by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., who said Ms. Ledbetter had waited too long to seek redress in the courts.

In dissent, Justice Ginsburg argued that the 180-day window was unfair: Salaries are usually secret, she wrote, and in the case of small wage differences, a woman or a member of a minority group trying to get ahead might choose to avoid “making waves” by complaining. But eventually, over a career, small differences become magnified as raises build from a lower base.

Justice Ginsburg urged Congress to fix the law to address the 180-day time frame. That same day, Hillary Rodham Clinton, then a senator from New York who was seeking the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, announced that she would file such a bill.

Ms. Ledbetter became a political activist, lobbying members of Congress and appearing with the eventual 2008 Democratic nominee, Mr. Obama, on the campaign trail.

The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 reset the clock for filing claims to 180 days from an employee’s latest paycheck, not just the first one deemed to be discriminatory. Justice Ginsburg, who considered the act one of her proudest achievements, hung a framed copy of it in her Supreme Court chambers.

Lilly McDaniel was born on April 14, 1938, in Jacksonville, Ala., to J.C. and Edna McDaniel. Her father was a mechanic at Anniston Army Depot, and her mother oversaw the home. Lilly graduated from Jacksonville High School in 1956 and married Charles Ledbetter. He died in 2008. Her survivors include their two children, Vickie Ledbetter Saxon and Phillip Ledbetter, and several grandchildren.

Before Goodyear hired her, Ms. Ledbetter was a financial-aid officer at Jacksonville State College.

Because Ms. Ledbetter’s two decades of discriminatory pay took place before the law named for her was enacted, she never received back salary or other financial compensation.

“Goodyear will never have to pay me what it cheated me out of,” she recalled saying after the 2009 signing ceremony at the White House. “In fact, I will never see a cent. But with the president’s signature today I have an even richer reward.”