In some states, employees have only 180 days after a discriminatory act (a termination based on race, for instance) to file a claim under Title VII. In the rest of the states, employees have only 300 days. Those ridiculously short deadlines became even more burdensome after the Supreme Court decided this week to reject the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission's long-standing belief that claims based on discriminatory pay arise with each discriminatory paycheck. According to the Supreme Court's 5-4 decision, the discrimination occurs when the level of pay is first set, not when each subsequent check is received.

As the NY Times editorializes today, the majority "forced an unreasonable reading on the law, and tossed aside longstanding precedents to rule in favor of an Alabama employer that had underpaid a female employee for years." The decision makes it almost impossible to bring a disparate pay claim, since employees rarely know what other employees are making at the time their pay is set.

Congress should amend Title VII, both by making clear that discrimination in pay is a continuing act, and by lengthening the period for filing all discrimination cases.