Thumbs down to 1st Court grafting Ledbetter onto Texas Labor Code

Remember Lilly Ledbetter? She was a supervisor at a plant who alleged she did the same work as her male counterparts but was paid less. The thing is, she didn't know about the pay disparity at the time. When she learned of the shortfall, she filed a charge of discrimination at the EEOC. The U.S. Supreme Court found on May 29, 2007, in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. Inc. that she had not filed her charge within the statute of limitations (300 days) and rejected the idea that each paycheck she received triggered the clock anew. Congress did not like this result and enacted the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009. Now an employee's time to file an EEOC charge begins anew with each paycheck that is a manifestation of the allegedly discriminatory act of setting unequal pay. Here’s what’s interesting. On April 1, Houston's 1st Court of Appeals revived a discrimination claim and held in Prairie View A&M University v. Chatha that a federal law (the Ledbetter Act) applies to cases arising under the Texas Labor Code. But, argued the employer, the Texas Legislature considered and rejected amending the code to follow Ledbetter. No mind, said the 1st Court, "The State's public policy in the Texas Act [the Labor Code] is to execute the policy in Title VII." Sorry, I’m not buying that. Whenever a court starts relying on "public policy," you know it reached a results-oriented decision, not a reasoned one. I hope this goes to the Texas Supreme Court.