Biography
Lilly Ledbetter (1938–2024) was an American equal-pay activist. She worked for 19 years as a manager at a Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company plant in Alabama before filing a gender-discrimination lawsuit in 1999 after learning she had been paid less than male colleagues.
The case reached the US Supreme Court, which ruled against her in 2007. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s dissent contributed to the passage of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, the first bill signed into law by President Barack Obama. Ledbetter appeared as herself in the 2018 documentary RBG.
