Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act...signed into law by Barack Obama!

Just moments ago, President Barack Obama signed his first bill into law.

With a brief flourish of his pen (he's left-handed, by the way) Mr. Obama affixed his signature to the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Bill, then passed off the keepsake to Ledbetter as a posse of Government Officials nodded approval on the sidelines.

The President noted that it was a historic moment.

"I sign the Fair Pay Bill in honor of Lilly Ledbetter and those who came before her."

With that, he added that new life had been breathed into a Constitution signed over two hundred years ago, which now guarantees an end to discrimination in the workplace.

Ledbetter - a seventy-year-old grandmother - worked for the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. in Gadsden (Alabama) from 1979 to 1998.

As she was nearing retirement, she received an anonymous tip that she was being paid less than male colleagues performing the same tasks in the workplace.

On the heels of the revelation, Ledbetter filed a charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission pursuant to Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act which makes it illegal to discriminate in paying wages based on race, gender, national origin and religion.

A jury initially awarded the Goodyear employee more than $3 million in back pay and punitive damages which was later reduced to $300,000.00 by a Judge presiding over the controversial case.

Finding fault with the lower court's ruling, Ms. Ledbetter and her lawyers appealed all the way to the the Supreme Court.

In a 5-4 ruling in May 2007, the Justices threw out Ledbetter's complaint, saying she was required to bring suit within 180 days of the initial act of discrimination even though she was not aware at the time that she was receiving less than her male colleagues.

In their landmark ruling, the court underscored though, that the 180-day statute of limitations is extended every time an employer violates the law by issuing a paycheck or engages in other practices that discriminate.

For example, if an employee alleges that she received a salary a couple of decades ago that was less than that of male co-workers because of discrimination, each new paycheck since that occurrence would be a new unlawful employment practice that resets the statute of limitations.

The bill, now in effect as a matter of law, is intended to ensure equal pay for women in the workplace henceforth.

The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Bill retains current limits on employer liability by restricting back-pay awards to two years, however.

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