Legislation aimed at restarting the statute of limitations for equal pay claims with the issuance of each paycheck – legislation Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg called for from the bench last year in her dissent in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire and Rubber - was blocked by Senate Republicans yesterday.

Despite a hard push by Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee Chairman Sen. Edward Kennedy to get the once-stalled bill to the Senate floor and to get it passed, Republicans filibustered the measure, and lawmakers fell four votes short of the 60 voters needed to break the filibuster.

GOP lawmakers complained that the legislation, called the “Ledbetter Fair Pay Act,” would lead to flood of litigation. But some were also angry that the vote was delayed in order to allow presidential candidates and Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to return to Washington from the campaign trail.

“Here we are, shut down on a Wednesday afternoon, no action in the Senate, in order to accommodate the Democratic candidates for president’s schedule,” Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said Wednesday, according to CNN.

Subscribers can find more background on the bill here from Lawyers USA.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 24th, 2008 at 8:13 am and is filed under Congress, Employment, Supreme Court. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.