The 2009 Fair Pay Act, to recount, overturned the 2007 Supreme Court decision in Ledbetter v. Goodyear that dated the statute of limitation as beginning the day the decision was made to pay someone in a discriminatory fashion.

The statute of limitation runs 180 days in states that lack state fair employment practice agencies and 300 days in states that do have such agencies.

The Compliance Manual makes it clear, however, that, unlike salaries, pensions are considered to be paid in full upon retirement, so the statute of limitation would commence from the date of retirement and would not be renewed upon issuance of new retirement checks.

"Therefore," according to the manual, "to avoid potential timeliness issues, an individual who is considering challenging his or her pension benefits is strongly encouraged to file a charge within 180/300 days after retirement."

To help employers and human resources professionals stay in compliance with the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and other similar pieces of legislation, Personnel Concepts has prepared a Fair Pay Discrimination Compliance Kit. Get your copy today–it’s comprehensive and easy to read and follow.

Grounds for reissuance would be based upon new statute-of-limitations guidelines under the Fair Pay Act. Previously, a complaint had to be filed within 180 days of a discriminatory employment decision, but the Lily Ledbetter Act extended the 180-day limit to recommence each time a paycheck is issued based on an earlier discriminatory decision, which could stretch out employer liability for years or even decades.

Employment lawyers earlier this year forecast a spate of new and reopened lawsuits based upon Ledbetter, and the EEOC may indeed open the legal spigot to get matters rolling. So far, however, courts have ruled narrowly in their interpretation of the Fair Pay Act and have generally not allowed it to be applied retroactively, but time will tell.

Any new right-to-sue notification would be good for 90 days.

Meanwhile, employers, you need to carefully protect yourselves against charges of discrimination based on gender, wage, age, disability and other factors. Personnel Concepts provides several discrimination resources to help you do just that. In matters of fair pay, pick up your copy today of our Compensation Discrimination Compliance Kit and safeguard yourselves.

Lilly Ledbetter, who was the subject of that Supreme Court ruling, will be there when Obama inks the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law.

The legislation reverses the court’s decision in the Ledbetter case that the 180-day statute of limitations on pay discrimination cases starts ticking when the initial decision is made to pay unfairly. The Fair Pay Act amends the 1964 Civil Rights Act and mandates that the statute starts ticking again every time a paycheck is issued to the victim.

(Pay discrimination is defined as an employee’s being paid less for the substantially same job and same set of job responsibilities, figuring in length of service, etc., based on age, race, gender and factors besides experience.)

Opponents fear that this will just open up the spigot for lawyers to march an endless stream of employees into court and win two years of backwardly adjusted pay.

They’re probably right.

N.B.: Catch this, the law is worded to “take effect as if enacted on May 28, 2007.” This is curious for a couple of reasons. First, I believe there’s a Constitutional ban on ex post facto laws (backdated laws), and this date is one day before the Supreme Court heard the Ledbetter case. Evidently, it’s been so written as to enable Lilly to go back to the Supreme Court and reopen her case. If so, I hope the court rules that the start date is unconstitutional.

Her friends in the Democratic party rushed to her aid with the aforementioned bill. It never got out of the Senate the past two years when the place had more Republicans and the bill faced a sure Bushian swat-back, but the times they are a-changin’. Now the Dems are within one vote of being filibuster proof, and indeed for this bill they invoked cloture (ending any filibuster) by the comfortable margin of 61-36. (Maine’s Olympia Snowe, for one, is a Republican in name only.)

The eponymous law now mandates that the statute of limitations (180 or 300 days, depending) begins anew each time a paycheck is issued or, ambiguously, “when an individual is affected by application of a discriminatory compensation decision.”

Though Ms. Ledbetter is now retired and not receiving paychecks, depending on how a judge might interpret “affected by,” she could well be back in court looking for her lost wages (men in similar positions were paid more, basically). Goodyear should just write a check and end all the publicity that led to this new law in the first place, but we’ll see.

Lilly Ledbetter and her legislation are now poised to enrich trial lawyers throughout the country (they being one of the two biggest donors, along with organized labor, to the Democrats and Barack Obama in the last election), while sending businesses into a funk and whetting the legal appetites of many a female employee. (One blog post I read predicted that this would lead to companies’ hiring only, or mainly, men. Not sure that would cut it legally, though.)

So, to borrow an old Klingon saying, “Revenge is a dish best served with the force of law.”

(Employers, I’ve found a convenient source for mastering all the discrimination and other laws and regulations you face. Get a copy of Personnel Concepts’ Equal Employment Opportunity Compliance Program.)

(To recount, the Fair Pay Act reverses a Supreme Court decision regarding when the statute of limitations begins on pay discrimination complaints. The court said it begins once the pay-discrimination decision is made; the new law says it begins anew each time a paycheck is issued.)

Meanwhile, this opening salvo in the pro-employee, pro-union, pro-trial-lawyer assault on Bush’s eight pro-business years is already drawing criticism and producing warnings.

So far, I haven’t heard the word “Armageddon” used in connection with the Fair Pay Act (as it was used toward the Employee Free Choice Act), but here’s one dire warning from Forbes.com:

Libertarian Richard A. Epstein calls the passage “Democratic Death Wish On Labor Relations.”

Interesting stuff. Epstein is a libertarian and a professor of law at the University of Chicago. He predicts that companies will now have to spend more time preparing for legal action and more time defending themselves in court in cases involving lots of “stale evidence.”

He writes that “every dollar that is spent in litigating the past is one less dollar for hiring new workers.”

Everytime a new labor law comes up for a vote, just remember who contributed the most to the Democrats and Barack Obama in the November 2008 election–unions and trial lawyers. Then you can see who’s really going to benefit from any laws or economic stimulus packages coming out of D.C.