Democracy Dies in Darkness

Lilly Ledbetter, and the wage gap that followed her to retirement and death

The equal pay icon died Saturday at 86, but she never stopped fighting for wage equity.

5 min
Lilly Ledbetter revisited the Supreme Court in 2018, 11 years after it ruled against her in a landmark case of wage discrimination. In 2009, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was signed into law. (Petula Dvorak/The Washington Post)
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Lilly Ledbetter never stopped fighting, never kicked back on her porch in Alabama, sipped a glass of sweet tea and savored her victory.

“Oh, I don’t even like sweet tea,” she told me, in the Alabama drawl she finally stopped trying to curb, when we talked a few years ago about her relentless crusade for equal pay and why she wouldn’t rest.

There’s a law named for her, and she was regularly recognized in airports, restaurants and gas stations across the country as “the equal pay lady.”

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