Colbert Nails the Insanity of Supreme Court Activist Decision in Ledbetter Case

Thank you Stephen Colbert. His mention of the Noll Garcia judgment was an eye opener. To start, let’s go back to the beginning. According to the Hawaii Reporter:

“Last year our conservative activist Supreme Court ruled that companies that discriminate against their employees are allowed to do so as long as they manage to hide the discrimination long enough for the statute of limitations to expire.”

In a case so bizarre Stephen Colbert got a stunned laugh out of his audience when he mentioned it, the Noll Garcia case is right out of the Twilight Zone. From the N.Y. Times:

The Idaho plaintiff, Noll Garcia, uses a wheelchair. He said his apartment violated federal standards because it was not readily accessible. Under the law, he had two years to challenge a “discriminatory housing practice” in court. The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, writing for the majority, said this two-year period began when construction of the building was complete. Mr. Garcia lost out because he filed suit in 2003 — within two years of renting the apartment, but 10 years after it was built.

Here’s Colbert’s biting commentary:



Apparently, Garcia should have known a decade ago that he was destined to rent the offending apartment.

In the clip, Colbert plays a clip of John McCain calling the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act a “trial lawyers dream.” That is the bottom line for Republicans. To hell with years of discrimination and back pay for American’s, you’ve got to stop those damn trial lawyers. Ideology over doing the people business. I have a question for McCain: Do companies have trail lawyers? If they do, so should the citizens of this country.

Then there is this:

The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit reached a similar conclusion in a lawsuit by blacks who had applied unsuccessfully for jobs as firefighters in Chicago. Judge Richard A. Posner cited the Ledbetter case in rejecting their contention that they were victims of a “continuing violation” of the civil rights law.

Violating the civil rights act is okay because it the violation is simply continued from years before. What?