Read through old Supreme Court decisions, and you’ll be struck by how little they tell you about the individual Americans at the center of the cases.
To take one example, the majority opinion in the landmark 1963 decision in Gideon v. Wainwright, which established the right to a court-appointed lawyer for indigent criminal defendants, doesn’t even bother to include Clarence Earl Gideon’s full name, which appears only in a direct quote cited in a footnote.
But the people in these cases have lives that began before their moment in Supreme Court jurisprudence and extend after it. And in some cases, they got the last laugh.
Ledbetter’s life is a good reminder that the fight for justice doesn’t always end at the courthouse doors.
Lilly Ledbetter, who died over the weekend at age 86, was one of those Americans. Her moment in legal history came in 2007, when the U.S. Supreme Court threw out her wage discrimination case, dramatically narrowing equal pay laws in the process. But Ledbetter pushed on, becoming a public advocate for fair pay and helping change the law in Congress just two years later.
Obituaries for Ledbetter have memorialized her fight for fair pay. But Ledbetter’s life is also a good reminder that the fight for justice doesn’t always end at the courthouse doors, especially in light of the current conservative majority’s attempts to close those doors to so many Americans.
Like many advocates, Ledbetter didn’t set out to become a crusader for justice; she fell into that role when she faced injustice.
A native of Alabama with a high-school education, Ledbetter went to work for the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. in 1979 as a line manager. The mostly male workplace was not a welcoming one. She said that her tires were slashed at one point and that she faced sexual harassment and intimidation. Still, she was good at her job, and she stuck with it for 19 years. Then, when she was near retirement, she learned things had been even worse than she knew.
An anonymous note left in Ledbetter’s locker told her that she was being paid substantially less than male managers: $3,272 a month, compared with $4,286 to $5,236.
When Ledbetter filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, her employer retaliated by reassigning her to a job that involved heavy lifting, she later testified. She won a civil suit but an appeals court reduced the damages from more than $3.5 million to just $360,000. Goodyear then appealed to the Supreme Court, which ruled against Ledbetter and threw out all damages.
The court’s 5-4 decision was a classic bit of cramped logic. Turning the law on its head, the court ruled that Ledbetter — and from that day forward, any similar defendants — needed to have filed her complaint about unequal pay within 180 days of the start of the discrimination.
The court simply ignored the facts of Ledbetter’s life. The fact that the discrimination happened over 19 years? The employment contract that barred her from discussing pay rates with her co-workers? The sexist work environment that kept anyone from even acknowledging the unequal pay for so long? None of that mattered as much as a stringent reading of the legal code.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who cut her teeth as a lawyer on just those kinds of gender discrimination cases — and was then the only woman on the court — eviscerated the decision in court, but she also pointed the way forward. Years later, Ledbetter recalled the exact phrase that Ginsburg wrote in her dissent: “She said, ‘Congress, the ball is in your court.’” The justice denied to Ledbetter for so long came swiftly. Ledbetter took that ball and ran with it. She held press conferences, met with members of Congress and testified in the House and the Senate. Democratic lawmakers looking to highlight their bill to undo the damage done by the court named it after her, and it quickly became a top legislative priority for the party. Ledbetter even spoke at the 2008 Democratic National Convention. The justice denied to Ledbetter for so long came swiftly. Barack Obama won the election, and just days after taking office, signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law as his first piece of legislation. Today, that law — and not the ignominious Supreme Court decision that ruled against her — is what Ledbetter is remembered for. But her real legacy is inspiring countless Americans who have been denied justice in the nation’s courtrooms. The fight, as she showed, does not have to end there.
Ryan Teague Beckwith is a newsletter editor for MS NOW. 
