Case study: Congress can limit the Supreme Court.
Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act
A sharply divided Supreme Court in 2007 ruled against Lilly Ledbetter in a dispute with her employer, Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company. Ledbetter worked at the company’s Gadsden, Ala., plant for nearly two decades when she discovered she had been paid significantly less than her male counterparts for the same job.
Ledbetter brought a sex-based pay discrimination suit under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The 5-4 majority opinion, authored by Justice Samuel Alito, held that Ledbetter’s lawsuit was time-barred because the alleged discrimination occurred too far in the past from the time that she brought her complaint.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote a fiery dissent that closed with an invitation to Congress “to correct this Court’s parsimonious reading of Title VII.”
In 2009, President Obama signed his first official legislation with the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which effectively overturned the Supreme Court’s decision by making it easier to file pay discrimination suits. Ginsburg kept a framed copy of the bill, signed by Obama, in her chambers.
A previous 1991 amendment to Title VII had an even more sweeping effect, overruling as many as a dozen Supreme Court decisions, according to Eskridge of Yale Law School.
Tobacco regulation
A bare majority of Supreme Court justices in 2000 ruled that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) lacked the authority to regulate tobacco. The Clinton-era case arose when the FDA in 1996 enacted regulations that aimed to curb smoking by kids and adolescents.
The court, in a 5-4 ruling, (FDA v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp) held that the FDA erred by defining nicotine as a drug under the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. In the 5 to 4 ruling, the judges said that the FDA overreached its authority when it reversed a decades-old policy in 1996 and sought to crack down on cigarette sales to minors.
“By no means do we question the seriousness of the problem that the FDA has sought to address,” Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote for the court. “The agency has amply demonstrated that tobacco use, particularly among children and adolescents, poses perhaps the single most significant threat to public health in the United States.”
However, she added, “It is plain that Congress has not given the FDA the authority that it seeks to exercise here.”
Nine years later, Congress responded by passing the bipartisan Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, which for the first time empowered the federal government to regulate cigarettes and other tobacco products.
Disability rights
Around the turn of the millennium, the Supreme Court issued a series of rulings that gave a narrow reading to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), eventually drawing a direct rebuke from lawmakers.
In one such case, Toyota Manufacturing, Kentucky v. Williams, a unanimous court in 2002 overruled a lower court for applying too relaxed a standard for reviewing a disability claim by an employee with carpal tunnel syndrome.
When Congress amended the ADA in 2008 to “restore the intent and protections” of the law, its legislative findings explicitly called out two Supreme Court rulings as erroneous.
“The holding of the Supreme Court in Toyota Motor Manufacturing, Kentucky, Inc. v. Williams further narrowed the broad scope of protection intended to be afforded by the ADA,” the bill’s text reads.