Ted Kennedy | The Surpreme Court's wrong turn -- and how to fix it.

The Surpreme Court's wrong turn -- and how to fix it.

Last May, the Supreme Court faced a textbook case of pay discrimination. Lilly Ledbetter was one of a few women supervisors working at a Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company plant in Gadsden, Alabama, and she remained at the plant despite her bosses’ bias against women. One even told her that “the plant did not need women,” that women “caused problems.” For almost two decades, the company systematically downgraded her performance evaluations to pay her less than male colleagues who performed the same duties. Her pay eventually fell 15 percent to 40 percent behind her male counterparts.

In 2003 a jury found that Ms. Ledbetter was paid less because she is a woman, and she was awarded full damages to correct the injustice. But in a 5-4 opinion, the Supreme Court held that Ms. Ledbetter was entitled to nothing at all. The majority ruled that she should have filed her case within a few months after the employer decided to pay her less than her male coworkers. Never mind that she had no way of knowing what other workers made, or that the discrimination continued with each paycheck. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the sole female justice, observed in dissent: “The Court does not comprehend, or is indifferent to, the insidious way in which women can be victims of pay discrimination.”

Unfortunately, the Ledbetter case is just one example of the Supreme Court’s dangerous new direction since the additions of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito. It is vital that Americans understand how profoundly the newest justices are affecting the Court, and how their confirmation hearings failed to anticipate these developments. Whether or not it was possible to prevent confirmation of the president’s Supreme Court nominees by a Republican-controlled Senate, the confirmation hearings should, at the very least, have informed the public about the nominees’ views on the pressing legal issues of our time. Their failure to do so…