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Original Post:
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| Taylor: Ledbetter law news coverage stank |
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| National Journal |
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| Fri, January 30, 2009 |
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Journalists covering Congress' passage of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act have "thoroughly distorted the facts" in that policy debate, continuing a pattern that began with "an explosion of ill-informed media outrage" after Ledbetter's Supreme Court loss in 2007. So writes National Journal's Stuart Taylor, who backs his opinions with his usual array of convincing facts and tightly constructed arguments. The core of his argument is that the law is an overreaction to the (arguable) deficiency in the old law that the Ledbetter case revealed. Rather than simply fix the restrictive time limits on Title VII suits, he argues, the new law goes so far that it invites a litigation frenzy that will hurt employers and only help plaintiffs' lawyers.
Because of Taylor's reputation for reason and reported fact, because he's not an ideologue, and because he concedes an argument to Ledbetter's supporters (about the reasonableness of time limits), he makes me suspect that we've just witnessed a massive journalistic failure in one of the first big policy shifts of the new president's administration. On the other hand, he undercuts some of his credibility with me when he blithely includes the media in his indictment of the parties that twisted their interpretations of the new law "to advance their agenda of opening the door wide to all manner of job-discrimination lawsuits." Taylor provides no evidence that reporters covering this debate (as opposed to pundits and bloviators) shared this agenda with lobbyists and other advocates. It's conceivable, but equally conceivable is that reporters were simply snowed by partisans and/or too lazy to pin down the facts. Despite that weakness, Taylor's argument is important and worth considering. Hurry, because National Journal eventually puts his articles behind the subscriber wall. (Via National Review's Bench Memos)
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Posted at 05:14 PM
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There is 1 comment to this post:
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| HansBader commented: |
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| Reporters amazingly lazy in reporting facts of Ledbetter case |
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Reporters have been amazingly lazy in just parroting Ledbetter's claims, even when they conflict with Ledbetter's own sworn deposition testimony and footnote 10 of the Supreme Court's decision in Ledbetter v. Goodyear. In so doing, they have been completely unfair to the Supreme Court.
As Stuart Taylor notes, Ledbetter knew for more than five years before she filed her EEOC complaint of the pay disparity she later claimed was discriminatory.
She admitted that in her deposition. Leading employment lawyer David Copus quoted from that very deposition last year in an article in Defense Counsel Journal. She admitted that she had been told of the disparity by 1992, and that she herself discussed the disparity with her manager in 1994 or 1995.
Yet reporters simply assert that Ledbetter didn't know of the disparity until shortly before the end of her career, shortly before she sued, citing her self-serving statements to the contrary after the Supreme Court's 2007 decision in her case.
Never mind that footnote 10 of the Supreme Court's opinion in Ledbetter v. Goodyear calls that story into question. In it, the Supreme Court noted that even letting Ledbetter sue based on when she discovered the discrimination -- rather than when it first occurred -- would have done her no good -- presumably because she had long known of the pay disparity for years prior to suing. (No justice took issue with this fact, or the fact that applying a "discovery rule" to Ledbetter's claim would have done her no good).
When I point out the above facts to newspapers that falsely claim that Ledbetter did not know of the disparity, or that falsely claim that the Supreme Court barred her from suing regardless of when she knew of the disparity (when the Supreme Court specifically left that issue open in footnote 10 of its decision), they are too lazy to even read the documentation I send them.
They just tell me that what I say can't be right because Ledbetter said otherwise in her (self-serving) statements after the Supreme Court's decision (which contradict her sworn testimony under oath in her deposition), and because so many other newspapers have already reported Ledbetter's claims as if they were undisputed facts.
But Stuart Taylor (and lawyers David Copus and Paul Mirengoff) are right, and the papers that reported to the contrary are wrong.
Incidentally, I am a lawyer, used to bring discrimination lawsuits for a living, and once worked in the federal government enforcing civil rights laws. So reporters should at least listen to what I have to say when I identify verifiable errors in their reporting.
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Posted Sat, January 31, 2009 at 10:24 AM
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