During last night's presidential debate, in response to a question about the appointment of Supreme Court justices, which ranged into a discussion about the propriety of judicial activism, Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) raised the issue of the Court's recent Ledbetter decision.  The transcript reads as follows:

Obama:  I'll just give you one quick example. Sen. McCain and I disagreed recently when the Supreme Court made it more difficult for a woman named Lilly Ledbetter to press her claim for pay discrimination.

For years, she had been getting paid less than a man had been paid for doing the exact same job. And when she brought a suit, saying equal pay for equal work, the judges said, well, you know, it's taken you too long to bring this lawsuit, even though she didn't know about it until fairly recently.

We tried to overturn it in the Senate. I supported that effort to provide better guidance to the courts; John McCain opposed it.

I think that it's important for judges to understand that if a woman is out there trying to raise a family, trying to support her family, and is being treated unfairly, then the court has to stand up, if nobody else will. And that's the kind of judge that I want.

Schieffer: Time's up.

McCain: Obviously, that law waved the statute of limitations, which you could have gone back 20 or 30 years. It was a trial lawyer's dream.

On May 29, 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., which held that the time period for challenging allegedly discriminatory pay practices under Title VII runs from the time the discriminatory pay decision was made.  It is safe to say that most disinterested observers would suggest that what the Court did was strictly enforce a statute of limitations to exclude a claim based on conduct occurring 15 years earlier -- not that they all of a sudden "made it more difficult" for women to bring timely claims.  But in this political season it seems much creative license is allowed to both candidates to stretch their characterizations.

Of course, the Democratic Congress immediately passed legislation designed to modify the applicable statute in response to the Supreme Court's decision.  The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act (H.R. 2831) would amend federal employment discrimination statutes to provide that an unlawful practice occurs with respect to discrimination in compensation when a discriminatory decision or practice is adopted, when an individual becomes subject to the discriminatory compensation decision or practice, or when an individual is affected by the discriminatory compensation decision or practice. The bill expressly states that an individual is affected by the discriminatory compensation decision or practice each time the individual receives a payment of wages, benefits, or other compensation. Thus, the applicable 180- or 300-day time period for filing an EEOC charge challenging an allegedly discriminatory compensation practice would begin to run anew with the receipt of each paycheck or benefit reimbursement check reflecting the discriminatory compensation action, no matter how long it has been since the discriminatory practice began.

The Ledbetter Act passed the House last summer by a vote of 225-199.  The bill was stalled by a Senate filibuster in April 2008, when a 56-42 vote failed to achieve cloture. 

Senator Obama's mention of the case last night would strongly suggest that the Ledbetter Act will be among the top employment law priorities undertaken by an Obama administration.