AFTER LEDBETTER. Yesterday SCOTUSblog had a follow-up to the Ledbetter v. Goodyear ruling which originally appeared in BNA's "Employment Discrimination Report." It does a good job of exploring previous case law and expresses frustration that the ruling may make fighting discrimination fuzzier. Jason Harrow says, "We face another decade (or more?) of inconsistent and contradictory court decisions, some of which will carve away at Ledbetter." Clearly the BNA publication has an interest in representing the employer's point of view, Harrow says, "individual claimants benefit from presumptions that often require the employer to disprove discrimination," but by definition, the plaintiff bringing charges clearly bears the burden of proof in a discrimination case. But it does show that such contradictory rulings aren't in the interest of either the employer or the employee because it makes the whole process more complicated. The House bill, which passed through committee this week, advocates a simple rejection of the court decision and is more in the spirit of the Bazemore v. Friday ruling, which seemed to side with the point of view that injustice is still injustice, even after 180 days. --Kay Steiger