Political Quotes

“Madam President, let me thank the Senator from Maryland for his comments about the Ledbetter decision. What we are gathering on the floor today to discuss is whether American corporations are getting something more than a fair shake from Republican appointees on the Supreme Court, whether there is a bit of a systemic lean in favor of corporate interests on the part of those judges to the point where we really now need to call that out because it is beyond what statistics could possibly justify. Certainly, the Ledbetter decision helps prove that point. We have at a company a woman who does not know she is being discriminated against; that for the same work as her male colleagues, she is being paid less. She has no way to know that. She does not know that. The fact that she does not know that is held against her rather than against the company which discriminated against her. The company was able to get off scot- free for all those months and years of discrimination before she found out what they were doing to her. The law did not require that particular answer. As the dissenting Justices pointed out, it was, in fact, the wrong answer. But it certainly served the interests of corporations across America to limit their liability when they discriminate against their employees. The case I wish to talk about is the Exxon decision where the Supreme Court threw out a jury verdict after the Exxon Valdez oilspill, a jury verdict for punitive damages in the amount of $5 billion.…”