How the Stimulus Bill will become law.

With Obama’s stimulus bill wending its way through Congress, there seems no better time to review the legislative process, and I have never found a better way than Schoolhouse Rock to do exactly that:

Righting wrongs the American way

One of the ways our legal system adjusts is that old process we remember from our first elementary school courses (and perhaps think of as trite and archaic): the system of checks and balances.  I grew up at a time when the federal courts were a substantial check on state legislatures, state courts, and local police forces.  Since my childhood, though, the political system has grown increasingly conservative, and by now the federal courts too have become conservative.  Last year, as the New York Times explained yesterday, the Supreme Court “made it much harder for people to challenge discrimination in employment, education, housing and other fields. Lilly M. Ledbetter lost her sex-based pay discrimination case at the Supreme Court in 2007, a decision that other courts have cited in rejecting lawsuits. Congress may overturn the ruling.”

The Court held that employment discrimination claims must be be filed within 180 days of the  ”the alleged unlawful employment practice” – the initial decision to pay Ledbetter less than men performing similar work.  Previously, courts had held that each paycheck after the initial discriminatory act (each of which would have been for less money than if the discrimination had not been committed), constituted a new act of “continuing discrimination.”  Thus, as long as the employee filed her claim within 180 days of a paycheck reflecting the impact of the discriminatory employment decision, her claim could be heard.

The decision was roundly criticized at the time and quite plainly cut off an enormous number of discrimination claims (whether the unlawful action had been discovered within the 180 days or not).  Now it seems Congress is ready to right this judicial wrong.  The bil it is is considering “states that a violation occurs each time a person receives a paycheck resulting from ‘a discriminatory compensation decision.’” “President Bush threatened to veto the bill, but Mr. Obama is eager to sign it.”