Forget the cartoonish “Great Man” version of American history, nearly all social progress in our country has been spurred by unheralded “nobodies” who felt a sting of injustice – and resolved to right the wrong.

Lilly Ledbetter, who recently died at 86, was one such trailblazing rebel, and it’s worth remembering her gutsy stand for “paycheck fairness.” After 20 years as a supervisor at Goodyear Tire in Gadsden, Alabama, Ledbetter was stunned in 1998 to learn that she had routinely been paid about 40 percent less than men doing the same job – robbing her of some $200,000. She promptly sued Goodyear for backpay… and won. Justice!

But Goodyear unleashed a pack of lawyers to drag Lilly through spirit-sucking years of legal appeals, including to the Supreme Court. There, Sam Alito, the far-right judicial extremist absurdly decreed that she should have filed her claim of sex discrimination when it first started 20 years ago. Never mind that she had no way of knowing back then that she was being gouged, Alito is not one to let reality interfere with his political agenda. So, she lost.

But sometimes you win by losing. Stung by the injustice, Ledbetter became a modern day Mother Jones, launching a fiery national campaign for workplace fairness. Backed by women’s groups and labor, her tenacious organizing finally compelled Washington to enact the 2009 “Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act,” eliminating the sex discrimination loophole exploited by the likes of Alito and Goodyear.

Ledbetter never got a penny of the money the system cheated her out of, but with the passage of this law, she rightly said: “I have an even richer reward.” Yes… and so does America.  

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