Lilly Ledbetter was nearing 60 and on the verge of retirement when someone sent her an anonymous letter telling her that for the preceding 19 years, she'd been earning less than her male counterparts at Goodyear Tire and Rubber.
On the day she started work as a supervisor in 1979, she was paid the same as men in the same job. But by 1998, when that letter arrived and Lilly consulted a lawyer, she was making $15,000 a year less than a man with the same experience doing the same job.
So she sued.
A federal jury found that over the course of her career, she lost out on upward of a quarter of a million dollars in pay because of discrimination, and the jury awarded her interest and penalties that brought the award to almost $4 million. The judge reduced the award to $360,000. The Supr | 
