Politifact is not alone in having trouble with the facts of the Lilly Ledbetter case. Bloggers at Think Progress and the American Constitution Society can’t get the facts right either. Both make the same mistake Politifact does in claiming that the issue was whether a 180-day statute of limitations precluded Ms. Ledbetter from suing over alleged discrimination that occurred years before she learned of it. Yet as I noted here (and others have noted for years), this is not so. Ms. Ledbetter first became aware of the pay disparities several years before she filed suit and the Supreme Court expressly reserved the question whether the failure to discover the alleged discrimination would have tolled the statute of limitations.
(And, FWIW, Politifact has still not corrected the factual error about the case in this post.)
UPDATE (10/22): Apparently Politifact is still investigating this question, which means they’ve spent more time evaluating whether they made this error than they did to write the initial item.
UPDATE (10/25): Politifact has now corrected its characterization of the Ledbetter decision.