Davis v. Bombardier Transportation Holdings (USA) Inc., 794 F.3d 266

Natasha Davis, a Type I diabetic, worked as an Air Train Agent (ATA II) for Bombardier and was responsible for emergency manual operation duties that carried higher pay than ATA I.
Davis went on disability leave in January 2007 for diabetic retinopathy, had multiple eye surgeries, and sought to return in August 2007; Bombardier required a return-to-work physical and concluded she could not operate the train in emergencies.
On September 1, 2007, Bombardier reassigned Davis from ATA II to ATA I, reducing her pay by $0.75/hour; Davis calls this a demotion.
Davis filed an EEOC charge on September 5, 2008, and sued in federal court on February 16, 2011; the district court granted summary judgment to Bombardier, ruling the demotion claim untimely because it occurred more than 300 days before the EEOC charge.
On appeal Davis argued the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 restarts the limitations period with each discriminatory paycheck, and thus her demotion-based pay loss is timely; Bombardier argued Ledbetter applies only to discrete compensation-setting decisions, not to demotions.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Whether the Ledbetter Act revives a demotion-based pay-reduction claim by restarting the limitations period with each paycheck	Ledbetter restarts the clock because the demotion reduced Davis’s pay, so each subsequent paycheck is a new discriminatory act	Ledbetter applies only to discriminatory compensation decisions/practices, not to discrete employment actions (like demotions) that merely reduce pay	Ledbetter does not encompass demotion-based pay reductions absent proof that the compensation itself was set discriminatorily; demotion claim is time-barred
Whether Davis presented evidence of pay discrimination (i.e., pay set discriminatorily) to fall within Ledbetter’s scope	Davis points to the pay decrease resulting from the demotion as the discriminatory compensation effect	Bombardier notes Davis’s post-demotion pay matched other ATA I employees and no evidence shows pay-setting was discriminatory	Court held Davis offered no proof that compensation was discriminatorily set; her claim is not a traditional pay-discrimination claim and is untimely

Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., 550 U.S. 618 (2007) (supreme court decision on accrual of pay-discrimination claims that Congress partially overruled)
Schwartz v. Merrill Lynch & Co., 665 F.3d 444 (2d Cir. 2011) (Ledbetter Act accrual principles applied in Second Circuit)
Noel v. Boeing Co., 622 F.3d 266 (3d Cir. 2010) (Ledbetter Act covers compensation decisions, not other discrete employment actions)
Almond v. Unified Sch. Dist. #501, 665 F.3d 1174 (10th Cir. 2011) (sister-circuit decision limiting Ledbetter to compensation decisions)
Schuler v. PricewaterhouseCoopers, LLP, 595 F.3d 370 (D.C. Cir. 2010) (interpreting scope of Ledbetter Act)