WASHINGTON: As a grandmother’s crusade peaked in a lavish White House ceremony, President Barack Obama on Thursday signed a new law making it easier for women to sue their employers for pay discrimination.

“This is a wonderful day,” Obama said, before putting his name to the bill named after Lilly Ledbetter, who found out after decades of work in an Alabama tire plant she had been paid less than her male colleagues. “It is fitting that with the very first bill I sign ... we are upholding one of this nation’s first principles that we are all created equal and each deserve a chance to pursue our own version of happiness,” Obama said.

Ledbetter, Obama’s wife Michelle Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the first woman speaker of the House of Representives Nancy Pelosi and other lawmakers watched as the president signed the bill in the East Room of the White House.

The law wipes out a Supreme Court ruling in 2007 that found workers had only 180 days to file a pay discrimination lawsuit — extending the starting deadline to the date of an employee’s last paycheck. Ledbetter, who worked at a Goodyear Tire plant in Alabama found only when she retired that her pay had fallen well behind men doing similar work.—AFP