President Barack Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law Thursday, January 29, 2009. The new law allows the filing of charges alleging pay discrimination with the issuance of each paycheck. Consequently, the deadline for filing a claim starts anew each time an employee receives wages, benefits, or other compensation tainted by a discriminatory pay decision and may go back as far as two years from the date a charge was filed with the EEOC.

What Employers Must Do: Employers must be prepared to defend employment decisions years after they occur. This means that employers must retain records of pay decisions for decades, including decisions related to promotions, transfers, job assignments and layoffs. The precise steps to be taken will depend on an employer's human resources systems, both paper and electronic, the type of decision (such as promotion, cost of living adjustment, etc.), and practical concerns relating to the quality of the data and the expense of storing and retrieving such data.

E-Verify Update: On Tuesday, January 27, 2009, the Department of Justice agreed to further delay the implementation of a final rule that would have required certain federal contractors and their subcontractors to use the E-Verify program and electronically verify the work eligibility of their newly hired and existing employees assigned to the contract. Implementation of the rule, originally set to go into effect on January 15, 2009, and then suspended until February 20, 2009, is now further suspended until May 21, 2009.

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