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| Also listed in: Campus Progress Blog |
Many progressives were shocked by the Supreme Court's 5-4 decision in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co to interpret workplace discrimination laws so narrowly as to throw out all cases that aren't brought within 180 days of a discriminatory pay decision. This is obviously unfair because one often does not realize for some time that their raise was inadequate. Rep. George Miller (D- CA) and 31 cosponsors have introduced legislation to reverse this unjust decision. Under the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, workers could instead bring suit within 180 days of receiving any paycheck affected by the discriminatory decision.
That might sound reasonable to you but apparently it's an outrage to the White House, which announced today a statement of administration policy strongly opposing the bill. Surely they must have some serious grounds for wanting to prevent potential victims of discrimination from having their day in court right? Wrong. They just hide behind the canard that the bill's "vastly expanded statute of limitations would exacerbate the existing heavy burden on the courts by encouraging the filing of stale claims." That's a pretty weak excuse. Am I crazy to suggest could we call the rightwing's bluff by introducing a bill to simply create more courts and hire more judges since that would presumably solve this problem they hide behind?
cross-posted on TAPPED
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Just askin'.
Let's just say I'm convinced there is enough utilitarian benefit to anti-discrimination laws to justify keeping them on the books.
(As far as search costs go, without any federal anti-discrimination statutes in place to protect them, the vast majority of Fortune 500 companies already offer full benefits to domestic partners of gays and lesbians. By contrast, it took a hell of a lot of muckraking and ultimately legislation to improve our food supply.)
If the government continues to regulate against discrimination, is there a good and compelling reason not to move on to height discrimination? It's a fact of biology, just as your skin's melanin content is (I won't say race is a fact of biology because most of our ideas of race are socially constructed) -- and it has zero measurable impact on your performance in the workplace, just as race, skin color, sexual orientation, and religion do. Multiple studies have shown a sizable pay gap against short Americans -- and psychological studies show that unconscious discrimination against short Americans is taller, with people disproportionately believing that tall Americans are better capable of leadership.
Should height be added to the anti-discrimination statutes? If not, why not?
(And no, for anyone reading, this is not to say that short people have it as bad as African Americans. However, we do probably have it worse than the Mormons, who are protected under anti-discrimination laws. I say 'we', because being 5'4" this is of more than just academic interest to me.)
Regarding my example, wouldn't it only fall under international commerce regulations if the products are shipped across national boundaries or if we're talking about fishing in international waters?
And hey, if you can provide compelling evidence that y'all shorties are being discriminated against in hiring practices and pay levels based solely on height, then I'm sold. I'm frankly much less concerned about anti-discrimination protections for short people than for groups who have previously suffered institutional discrimination, and I don't want to give the impression that I have some compunction about arbitrarily deciding that I care more about racial, gender-based or sexuality-based discrimination (you guys at least had Martin Van Buren and James Madison, but when has there ever been a black, female or gay president, after all?). But I do tend to consider pay discrimination for identical work to be an unjustifiable harm to the worker, in classical liberal terms.
(Just a quick disclaimer: obviously, I'm not a classical liberal, and my reasoning is not based on classic liberalism in any meaningful sense--I'm just trying to defend my position using the appropriate frames. If, for some reason, you find a fundamental flaw in my conflating laissez-faire capitalism with classical liberalism, please feel free to point it out)