National Employment Lawyers Association Applauds Lilly Ledbetter’s Cousel

Wiggins Childs Quinn & Pantazis, LLC

“Lilly could have accepted her lot and moved on. She could have decided that it wasn’t worth the
hassle and the harassment that would inevitably come with speaking up for what she deserved.
But instead, she decided that there was a principle at stake, something worth fighting for. So she
set out on a journey that would take more than ten years, take her all the way to the Supreme
Court of the United States, and lead to this day and this bill which will help others get the justice
that she was denied.”

–President Barack Obama, in remarks at the signing ceremony for the
Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act on January 29, 2009.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog_post/AWonderfulDay/

Along with millions of people across the country, NELA celebrated the passage of the Lilly Ledbetter
Fair Pay Restoration Act last Thursday, January 29, 2009. NELA and its coalition partners, including
Lilly Ledbetter herself, worked hard to help beat back several efforts that would have weakened the
legislation.
Many have been acknowledged for making the new Ledbetter law possible, but NELA would be
remiss if we did not recognize the tireless efforts of Lilly Ledbetter’s legal team, Wiggins Childs
Quinn & Pantazis, LLC (Birmingham, AL), who championed Lilly’s case for ten years. Under the
direction of lead counsel Jon Goldfarb, they fought for Lilly, winning at trial only to lose on appeal in
the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, and then losing by a narrow 5-4 decision in the
U.S. Supreme Court in 2007.
Lilly’s journey – and indeed the Ledbetter law itself – would not have been possible without the years
of commitment and devotion of Wiggins Childs to the cause of equality and justice in the American
workplace.
Although the Ledbetter bill will not undo the years of injustice Lilly faced, or restore the earnings to
which she deserved, we applaud and thank Wiggins Childs for charting the course for this ultimate
victory for all of America’s workers